€X    LIBR' 


• 


%?&n/  &uz#?^;i<z&?2/. 

s/su-JZ  (Tto-cdta^&ns  /%$. 


LEADERS     OF 
THE     PEOPLE 

STUDIES    IN    DEMOCRATIC    HISTORY 
ty  JOSEPH    CLAYTON        %*r        %* 

WITH  A  FRONTISPIECE  IN  PHOTOGRAVURE 
AND     NUMEROUS    OTHER     ILLUSTRATIONS 


NEW  YORK :    MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 

TWO     EAST    TWENTY -NINTH     STREET     •     MCMXI 


To  the  Memory  of 
FREDERICK     YORK    POWELL 

Regius  Professor  of  Modern  History 
at  the  University  of  Oxford 
1894-1904 

"  I  loved  him  in  life  and  I  love  him 
none  the  less  in  death  :  for  what 
I  loved  in  him  is  not  dead." 


2082445 


CONTENTS 


Page 

PREFACE  xi 

I.    ARCHBISHOP   ANSELM   AND    NORMAN  AUTOCRACY, 

1093-1130  3 
II.    THOMAS  OF  CANTERBURY,  THE  DEFENDER  OF  THE 

POOR,   1162-1170  33 

III.  WILLIAM      FITZOSBERT,     THE      FIRST     ENGLISH 

AGITATOR,  1188-1189  69 

IV.  STEPHEN    LANGTON    AND    THE    GREAT   CHARTER, 

1207-1215  81 

V.    BISHOP  GROSSETESTE,  THE  REFORMER,   1235-1253  99 

VI.     SlMON    OF    MONTFORT    AND    THE    ENGLISH    PARLIA- 
MENT,   1258-1265  IJ7 

VII.    WAT  TYLER  AND  THE  PEASANT  REVOLT,   1381  141 

VIII.   JACK  CADE,  THE  CAPTAIN  OF  KENT,   1450  173 

IX.    SIR  THOMAS  MORE  AND  FREEDOM  OF  CONSCIENCE, 

*  S29~l  535  193 

X.    ROBERT  KET  AND  THE  NORFOLK  RISING,  1549  217 

XI.    ELIOT,  HAMPDEN,  AND  PYM  AND  THE  SUPREMACY 

OF  THE  COMMONS,  1626-1643  245 

XII.   JOHN  LILBURNE  AND  THE  LEVELLERS,  1647-1653  277 

XIII.  WlNSTANLEY   THE    DIGGER,     1649-1650  293 

XIV.  MAJOR  CARTWRIGHT,  THE  FATHER  OF  REFORM 

1776-1820  307 

XV.    ERNEST  JONES  AND  CHARTISM  1838-1868  319 

CONCLUSION  335 

INDEX  339 


vn 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

JOHN  HAMPDEN 

From  the  Engraving  by  Jacob  Houbraken  Frontispiece 

ARCHBISHOP  ANSELM 

From  an   Old  French  Engraving  in  the  facing  p.    3 

British  Museum 

THOMAS  A  BECKET 

From  an  Engraving  after  Van  Eyck  ,,       33 

KING  RICHARD  II. 

From  the  Panel  Painting  in  the  Sanctuary  in 

Westminster  Abbey  ,,     141 

SIR  THOMAS  MORE 

From  the  Drawing  by  Hans  Holbein  ,,     193 

SIR  JOHN  ELIOT 

From  a  Steel  Engraving  by  William  Holl  , ,     245 

JOHN  PYM 

From  the  Engraving  by  Jacob  Houbraken  ,,     257 

MAJOR  CARTWRIGHT 

From  a  Contemporary  Drawing  , ,    307 


IX 


PREFACE 

"Let  us  noV>  praise  famous  men,  and  our 
fathers  who  begat  us." 


I 


names  of  the  seventeen  men,  here 
named  "  Leaders  of  the  People,"  are  for 
the  most  part  familiar  in  our  mouths  as 
household  words.  Those  who  triumphed,  like 
Anselm  and  Stephen  Langton ;  or  whose  cause 
triumphed,  like  Simon  of  Montfort,  Eliot,  Pym  and 
Hampden,  are  beyond  any  loss  of  fame.  Those 
who  in  high  place  quitted  themselves  like  men  and 
died  game  (if  the  phrase  may  be  permitted),  as  did 
Thomas  Becket  and  Sir  Thomas  More,  have,  for  all 
time,  deservedly  their  reward.  The  unsuccessful 
rebels,  FitzOsbert  (called  Longbeard),  Wat  Tyler, 
Jack  Cade  and  Robert  Ket,  are  hard  put  to  get  rid 
of  the  obloquy  heaped  upon  them  by  contemporary 
authority  ;  while  the  later  rebels,  equally  unsuccess- 
ful, Lilburne,  Winstanley,  Major  Cartwright  and 
Ernest  Jones,  relying  on  the  pen  rather  than  the 
sword,  escaped  the  hangman,  and  in  so  doing 
narrowly  escaped  oblivion.  Good  Bishop  Grosse- 
teste,  living  out  his  long  life,  thwarted  often,  but 
unmartyred,  enjoys  the  reputation  commonly  awarded 
to  conscientious  public  servants  who  die  in  harness. 

On  the  whole,  re-perusing  the  records  of  these 
seventeen  men,  who  would  altogether  reverse   the 

xi 


xii  Leaders  of  the  People 

verdicts  of  time?  The  obloquy  may  be  removed 
when  the  work  of  the  rebels  is  fairly  seen,  and  it 
may  be  judged  that  they  deserved  better  of  the  State 
than  appeared  when  they  troubled  its  peace.  The 
rebels  of  the  pen,  too,  should  be  worthy  of  recollec- 
tion in  this  age,  for  they  wrought  manfully  with  the 
weapon  now  at  once  so  powerful  and  so  popular. 
The  greater  men  of  our  series  stand  out  higher  as 
the  distance  increases.  So  far  readjusted,  the 
awards  of  history  may  be  accepted. 

But  with  all  the  differences  of  character,  one  com- 
mon quality  binds  these  men  whose  stories  are  here 
retold — a  resolute  hatred  of  oppression.  And  one 
common  work,  successful  or  unsuccessful,  was  theirs 
— to  labour  for  the  liberties  of  England  and  the 
health  of  its  people.  The  value  of  each  man's  work 
can  only  be  stated  approximately  :  it  is  difficult  to 
make  full  allowance  for  the  vastly  different  parts  our 
heroes,  statesmen  and  rebels  alike,  were  called  to 
play.  The  great  thing  is,  that  whatever  the  part, 
they  played  it  faithfully,  as  they  read  it,  to  the  end. 
We  may  admit  the  degrees  of  service  given :  it  is 
impossible  to  do  otherwise.  Some  of  these  Leaders 
shone  as  great  orbs  of  light  in  their  day  and 
generation,  lighting  not  only  England,  but  all  western 
Europe — and  still  their  light  burns  true  and  clear 
across  the  centuries.  Others  were  but  flickering 
rush-lights — long  extinct  now.  But  none  were  will- 
o'-the-wisps,  for  all  helped  to  show  the  road  to  be 
travelled  by  English  men  and  women  seeking  free- 


Prefi 


ace  xni 


dom,  and  moving  ever  towards  democracy.  At  the 
least,  we — enjoying  an  inheritance  won  at  a  great 
price,  and  only  to  be  retained  on  terms  no  easier — can 
keep  the  memory  green  of  some  few  valiant  servants 
of  our  liberties.  What  is  wanted  is  a  real  history  of 
the  growth  of  the  idea  of  freedom  and  of  popular 
liberty  in  this  country  ;  and  these  rough  biographical 
sketches  may  be  accepted  as  a  contribution  to  the 
materials  for  such  a  book.  "  Biography  is  a  depart- 
ment of  history,  and  stands  to  it  as  the  life-history 
of  a  plant  or  an  animal  does  to  general  biology." 

I  have  gone  back  to  all  the  original  sources  to  get 
once  more  at  the  lives  of  these  "  Leaders  of  the 
People,"  and  to  see  them  as  they  were  seen  by  their 
contemporaries ;  but  I  have  also  done  my  best  to 
read  what  the  historians  of  our  own  day  have  written 
concerning  them,  and  in  mentioning  my  authorities 
I  have,  in  each  case,  given  a  list  of  the  modern 
books  that  seem  to  me  valuable. 

J.  C. 

September,    1910. 


Archbishop  Anselm  and  Norman 
Autocracy 

1093-1109 


AUTHORITIES  :  Eadmer — Historia  Novorum  and  Life 
of  Anselm  ;  Orderic  of  St.  Evroul  ;  The  English 
Chronicle;  Florence  of  Worcester  ;  William  of  Malmes- 
bury  ;  (Rolls  Series) ;  Sir  Francis  Palgrave — England 
and  Normandy  ;  Freeman  — Norman  Conquest,  Vol.  V., 
Reign  of  William  Rufus  ;  Dean  Church — St.  Anselm. 


ARCHBISHOP    ANSELM 

(From  an  old  French  Engraving  in  the  British  Museum.) 


ARCHBISHOP  ANSELM  AND 
NORMAN  AUTOCRACY 
1093  -  1 109. 


I 


first  real  check  to  the  absolutism  of 
Norman  rule  in  England  was  given  by 
Anselm,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

The  turbulent  ambition  of  Norman 
barons  threatened  the  sovereignly  of  William  the 
Conqueror  and  of  his  son,  the  Red  King,  often 
enough,  but  these  outbreaks  promised  no  liberty  for 
England.  The  fires  of  English  revolt  were  stamped 
out  utterly  five  years  after  Senlac,  and  the  great 
Conqueror  at  his  death  left  England  crushed  ;  but  he 
left  it  under  the  discipline  of  religion,  and  he  left  it 
loyal  to  the  authority  of  the  crown,  grateful  for 
the  one  protection  against  the  lawless  rule  of  the 
barons. 

The  English  Chronicler,  writing  as  "one  who 
knew  him  and  once  lived  at  his  court,"  summed  up 
the  character  of  the  Conqueror's  life  and  work  in 
words  that  have  been  freely  quoted  through  the 
centuries : — 

"King  William  was  wiser  and  mightier  than  any 
of  his  forerunners.  He  built  many  minsters,  and  was 
gentle  to  God's  servants,  though  stern  beyond  all 
measure  to  those  who  withstood  his  will.  ...  So 
stark  and  fierce  was  he  that  none  dared  resist  his  will. 
Earls  that  did  aught  against  his  bidding  he  put  in 
bonds,  and  bishops  he  set  off  their  bishoprics,  and 


4  Leaders  of  the  People         [1093- 

abbots  off  their  abbacies,  and  thanes  he  cast  into 
prison.  He  spared  not  his  own  brother,  called  Odo, 
who  was  the  chief  man  next  to  the  king,  but  set  him 
in  prison.  So  just  was  he  that  the  good  peace  he 
made  in  this  land  cannot  be  forgotten.  For  he 
made  it  so  that  a  man  might  fare  alone  over  his  realm 
with  his  bosom  full  of  ""old,  unhurt ;  and  no  man 

O 

durst  slay  another  man  whatsoever  the  evil  he  hath 
done  him  ;  and  if  any  man  harmed  a  woman  he  was 
punished  accordingly.  He  ruled  over  England,  and 
surveyed  the  land  with  such  skill  that  there  was  not 
one  hide  but  that  he  knew  who  held  it,  and  what 
it  was  worth,  and  these  things  he  set  in  a  written 
book.  So  mighty  was  he  that  he  held  Normandy 
and  Brittany,  won  England  and  Maine,  brought 
Scotland  and  Wales  to  bow  to  him,  and  would, 
had  he  lived  two  years  longer,  have  won  Ireland 
by  his  renown,  without  need  of  weapons.  Yet 
surely  in  his  time  men  had  much  travail  and  very 
many  sorrows ;  and  poor  men  he  made  to  toil  hard 
for  the  castles  he  had  built.  He  fell  on  covetous- 
ness,  and  the  love  of  gold  ;  and  took  by  right  and 
by  unright  many  marks  of  gold  and  more  hundred 
pounds  of  silver  of  his  people,  and  for  little  need. 
He  made  great  deer-parks,  and  ordered  that  whoso 
slew  hart  or  hind,  him  men  should  blind ;  and 
forbade  men  to  slay  deer  or  boar,  and  made  the 
hare  go  free ;  he  loved  the  big  game  as  if  he  were 
their  father.  And  the  poor  men  that  were  oppressed 
he  recked  nought  of.  All  must  follow  the  king's 
will  if  they  would  live,  or  have  land,  or  even  a  quiet 
life." 

But  now,   in   September,    1087,  the  great    King 
William  was  dead,  with  his  life-work   done  ;    and 


-i  109]  Archbishop  Anselm  5 

from  the  tyranny  of  a  strong  and  just  ruler,  England 
passed  to  the  despotism  of  his  fearless  son,  William 
the  Red,  who  was  "terrible  and  mighty  over  his 
land  and  his  men  and  towards  all  his  neighbours  ; " 
in  whose  reign  "all  that  was  loathsome  in  the  eyes 
of  God  and  righteous  men  was  of  common  use  ; 
wherefore  he  was  loathed  by  well-nigh  all  his 
people,  and  hateful  to  God  as  his  end  showed." 

There  was  much  of  the  later  Puritan  in  William  I., 
in  the  steadfastness  of  purpose,  the  suppression  of 
"  malignants,"  and  determination  to  have  justice 
done,  no  less  than  in  the  sincerity  for  Church 
reform,  and  the  deep  respect  for  the  ordinances 
of  religion.  No  king  of  England  worked  more 
harmoniously  with  a  strong  archbishop  than 
William  I.  with  Lanfranc — save,  perhaps,  Charles  I. 
with  Laud. 

Then  on  the  death  of  William  I.,  followed  less 
than  two  years  later  by  Lanfranc's,  came  the 
reaction  in  Church  and  State  from  the  efforts  after 
law,  religion,  and  social  decency  under  the  Con- 
queror's rule. 

The  Red  King  had  all  his  father's  sternness  and 
strength,  but  was  without  any  of  that  belief  in 
justice,  that  faith  in  the  Sovereign  Power  of  a 
Living  God,  that  desire  for  law  and  order,  and 
that  grave  austerity  in  morals,  which  saved  the 
Conqueror  from  baseness  in  his  tyranny. 

William  II.,  unmarried,  made  the  wildest  and 
most  brutish  profligacy  fashionable  at  court.  To 
pay  for  his  debaucheries  and  extravagances  he 
plundered  all  who  could  pay,  in  especial  the  Church, 
enjoying  the  revenues  of  all  vacant  sees  and  abbeys, 
and  declining  to  fill  up  the  vacancies  so  that  this 


6  Leaders  of  the  People         [1093- 

enjoyment  might  remain.  After  Lanfranc,  as  the 
king's  chief  adviser,  came  Ranulf  (nicknamed  the 
Torch,  or  Firebrand),  a  coarse,  unscrupulous  bully, 
with  the  wit  of  a  criminal  lawyer.  This  man  was 
made  Bishop  of  Durham,  and  Justiciar.  For  him 
government  meant  nothing  but  the  art  of  getting 
money  for  his  royal  master,  and  silencing  all 
opposition. 

For  over  three  years  there  was  no  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  and  the  Red  King  refused  to  fill 
up  the  vacancy  caused  by  Lanfranc's  death,  pre- 
ferring to  enjoy  the  revenues  and  possessions  of 
the  see ;  a  thing  that  was  shocking  to  all  lovers 
of  religion,  and  scandalous  to  those  who  cared  for 
public  decency  and  the  good  estate  of  the  country. 

Eadmer,  a  contemporary,  describes  the  condition 
of  England  in  those  early  years  of  William  II.  :— 

"  The  king  seized  the  church  at  Canterbury,  the 
mother  of  all  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  and 
the  neighbouring  isles  ;  he  bade  his  officers  to  make 
an  inventory  of  all  that  belonged  to  it,  within  and 
without ;  and  after  he  had  fixed  an  allowance  for 
the  support  of  the  monks  who  served  God  in  that 
place,  he  ordered  the  remainder  to  be  disposed  of 
at  a  rent  and  brought  under  his  domain.  So  he 
put  up  the  Church  of  Christ  to  sale  ;  giving  the 
power  of  lordship  over  it  to  anyone  who,  however 
hurtful  he  might  be,  would  bid  the  highest  price. 
Every  year,  in  wretched  succession,  a  new  rent 
was  set ;  for  the  king  would  allow  no  bargain  to 
remain  settled,  and  whoever  promised  more  ousted 
him  who  was  paying  less,  unless  the  former  tenant, 
giving  up  his  original  bargain,  came  up  of  his  own 
accord  to  the  offer  of  the  later  bidder  :  and  every 


-i  109]  Archbishop   Anselm  7 

day  might  be  seen,  besides,  the  most  abandoned 
of  men  on  their  business  of  collecting  money  for 
the  king,  marching  about  the  cloisters  of  the 
monastery,  heedless  of  the  religious  rule  of  God's 
servants,  and  with  fierce  and  savage  looks  giving 
their  orders  on  all  sides ;  uttering  threats,  lording 
it  over  every  one,  and  showing  their  power  to  the 
utmost.  What  scandals  and  quarrels  and  irregu- 
larities arose  from  this  I  hate  to  remember.  Some 
of  the  monks  of  the  church  were  dispersed  at  the 
coming  of  this  misfortune,  and  sent  to  other  houses, 
and  those  who  remained  suffered  many  tribulations 
and  indignities.  What  shall  I  say  of  the  church 
tenants,  ground  down  by  such  wasting  and  misery, 
that  one  might  doubt,  but  that  worse  followed, 
whether  escaping  with  bare  life  they  could  have 
been  more  cruelly  oppressed.  Nor  did  all  this 
happen  only  at  Canterbury.  The  same  savage 
cruelty  raged  in  all  her  daughter  churches  in 
England,  which,  when  bishop  or  abbot  died,  at 
that  time  fell  into  widowhood.  And  this  king, 
too,  was  the  first  who  ordered  this  woeful  oppression 
against  the  churches  of  God ;  he  had  inherited 
nothing  of  this  sort  from  his  father,  but  was  alone 
in  keeping  the  vacant  churches  in  his  own  hands. 
And  thus,  wherever  you  looked,  there  was  wretched- 
ness before  your  eyes ;  and  this  distress  lasted  for 
nearly  five  years  over  the  Church  of  Canterbury, 
always  increasing,  always,  as  time  went  on,  growing 
more  cruel  and  evil." 

There  is  no  word  of  exaggeration  in  this  pitiful 
lament  of  Eadmer's.  England  under  William  II. 
was  at  the  mercy  of  a  Norman  whose  notion  of 
absolute  monarchy  was  to  bleed  the  land  as  a  subject 


8  Leaders  of  the  People  [logs- 

province.  Courageous  in  battle  he  was,  and  skilful 
in  arms,  but  utterly  heedless  of  the  welfare  of  the 
people  he  ruled.  It  was  enough  for  the  Red  King 
if  his  demands  for  money  were  met.  There  was  no 
one  strong  enough  to  gainsay  his  will,  or  stand 
before  him  as  the  prophets  of  old  stood  before  the 
kings  of  Israel,  until  Anselm  came  to  Canterbury. 
It  is  only  in  the  utterances  of  men  like  Eadmer  we 
learn  something  of  the  misery  of  the  nation.1 

The  king  was  with  his  court  at  Gloucester  at 
Christmas,  1092,  and  Anselm,  then  abbot  of  the 
famous  monastery  of  Bee  in  Normandy,  was  in 
England  at  that  time  ;  partly  to  comfort  his  friend, 
Earl  Hugh  of  Chester,  who  was  sick,  and  partly  to 
attend  to  the  English  affairs  of  his  monastery. 

Anselm  was  known  as  the  friend  of  Lanfranc. 
He  had  been  a  welcome  guest  at  the  court  of  the 
Conqueror  and  in  the  cloisters  at  Canterbury.  His 
character  stood  high  above  all  contemporaries  in 
England  or  Normandy.  Anselm  was  surely  the  right 
man  to  be  made  archbishop,  and  so  put  an  end  to  a 
state  of  things  which  even  to  the  turbulent  barons 
was  discreditable  to  the  country. 

The  Red  King  bade  Anselm  come  to  his  court, 
and  received  him  with  great  display  of  honour. 

1  "  By  the  mouth  of  the  clergy  spoke  the  voice  of  the  helpless,  defence- 
less multitudes  who  shared  with  them  in  the  misery  of  living  in  a  time 
when  law  was  the  feeblest  and  most  untrustworthy  stay  of  right,  and 
men  held  everything  at  the  mercy  of  masters,  who  had  many  desires 
and  less  scruples,  were  quickly  and  fiercely  quarrelsome,  impatient  of 
control,  superiority  and  quiet,  and  simply  indifferent  to  the  suffering, 
the  fear,  the  waste  that  make  bitter  the  days  when  society  is  enslaved 
to  the  terrible  fascination  of  the  sword." — Church,  Saint  Anselm. 

"  Unrestrained  by  religion,  by  principle  or  by  policy,  with  no  family 
interests  to  limit  his  greed,  extravagance  and  hatred  of  his  kind,  a  foul 
incarnation  of  selfishness  in  its  most  abhorrent  form,  the  enemy  of  God 
and  man,  William  Rufus  gave  to  England  and  Christendom  a  pattern  of 
absolutism." — Stubbs,  Constitutional  History.  Vol.  I. 


-i  log]  Archbishop  Anselm  9 

Then  came  a  private  interview,  and  Anselm  at  once 
told  the  king  how  men  spoke  ill  of  his  misrule  : 
"  Openly  or  secretly  things  were  daily  said  of  him 
by  nearly  all  the  men  of  his  realm  which  were  not 
seemly  for  the  king's  dignity."  They  parted,  and 
Anselm  was  busy  for  some  time  in  England.  When 
the  abbot  wished  to  return  to  Bee  William  refused 
him  leave  to  quit  the  country. 

At  the  beginning  of  Lent,  March,  1093,  tne  king 
was  lying  sick  at  Gloucester.  It  was  believed  the 
sickness  was  mortal.  Certainly  the  king  thought 
himself  dying.  Anselm  was  summoned  to  minister 
to  him,  and  on  his  arrival  bade  the  king  "make  a 
clean  confession  of  all  that  he  knows  that  he  has 
done  against  God,  and  promise  that,  should  he 
recover,  he  will  without  pretence  amend  in  all  things. 
The  king  at  once  agreed  to  this,  and  with  sorrow  of 
heart  engaged  to  do  all  that  Anselm  required,  and  to 
keep  justice  and  mercy  all  his  life  long.  To  this  he 
pledged  his  faith,  and  made  his  bishops  witnesses 
between  himself  and  God,  sending  persons  in  his 
stead  to  promise  his  word  to  God  on  the  altar.  An 
Edict  was  written  and  sealed  with  the  king's  seal 
that  all  prisoners  should  be  set  free  in  all  his  domin- 
ions, all  debts  forgiven,  all  offences  heretofore  com- 
mitted pardoned  and  forgotten  for  ever.  Further, 
good  and  holy  laws  were  promised  to  the  whole 
people,  and  the  sacred  upholding  of  right  and  such 
solemn  inquest  into  wrongdoing  as  may  deter 
others." 

Thus  Eadmer. 

Florence  of  Worcester  puts  the  matter  more 
briefly.  "  When  the  king  thought  himself  about  to 
die  he  vowed  to  God,  as  his  barons  advised  him,  to 


io  Leaders  of  the  People  [logs- 

amend  his  life,  to  sell  no  more  churches  nor  farm 
them  out,  but  to  defend  them  by  his  kingly 
might,  and  to  end  all  bad  laws  and  to  establish  just 
laws." 

There  was  still  the  vacant  archbishopric  to  be 
filled,  and  the  king  named  Anselm  for  Canterbury. 

In  vain  Anselm  pleaded  that  he  was  an  old  man 
— he  was  then  sixty — and  unfit  for  so  great  a  respon- 
sibility, that  he  was  a  monk  and  had  shunned  the 
business  of  the  world. 

The  bishops  assembled  round  the  sick  king's  bed 
would  not  hear  the  refusal.  Here  was  religion  well 
nigh  destroyed  in  England,  and  evil  rampant,  and 
the  Church  of  God  stricken  almost  to  death,  and  at 
such  a  time  was  Anselm  to  prefer  his  own  ease  and 
quiet  to  the  call  to  deliver  Canterbury  from  its 
bondage  ?  By  main  force  they  placed  a  pastoral 
staff  within  his  hands,  and  while  the  crowd  shouted 
"  Long  live  the  bishop ! "  he  was  "  carried  rather 
than  led  to  a  neighbouring  church."  The  king  at 
once  ordered  that  Anselm  should  be  invested  with 
all  the  temporal  rights  of  the  see,  as  Lanfranc  had 
held  them,  and  in  September,  1093,  Anselm  was 
enthroned  at  Canterbury,  and  in  December  he  was 
consecrated. 

Anselm  warned  the  bishops  and  nobles  when  they 
forced  the  archbishopric  upon  him  that  they  were 
making  a  mistake.  "  You  have  yoked  to  the  plough 
a  poor  weak  sheep  with  a  wild  bull,"  he  said.  "  This 
plough  is  the  Church  of  God,  and  in  England  it  has 
been  drawn  by  two  strong  oxen,  the  king  and  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  one  to  do  justice  and 
to  hold  power  in  the  things  of  this  world,  the  other 
to  teach  and  govern  in  the  things  eternal.  Now 


-i  IOQ]  Archbishop  Anselm  n 

Lanfranc  is  dead,  and  with  his  untamed  companion 
you  have  joined  an  old  and  feeble  sheep." 

That  the  king  and  the  archbishop  were  unevenly 
yoked  was  manifest  on  William's  recovery,  but  it 
was  no  poor  sheep  with  whom  Rufus  had  to  deal, 
but  a  man  as  brave  and  steadfast  as  he  was  gentle 
and  wise. 

Trouble  began  at  once  when  William  rose  from 
his  sick-bed.  Anselm  was  now  enthroned  and  no 
attempt  was  made  to  revoke  the  appointment.  But 
the  king's  promises  of  public  amendment  were 
broken  without  hesitation.  The  pardoned  prisoners 
were  seized,  the  cancelled  debts  redemanded  and  the 
proceedings  against  offenders  revived. 

"  Then  was  there  so  great  misery  and  suffering 
through  the  whole  realm  that  no  one  can  remember 
to  have  seen  its  like  in  England.  All  the  evil 
which  the  king  had  wrought  before  he  was  sick 
seemed  good  by  the  side  of  the  wrong  which  he  did 
when  he  was  returned  to  health." 

The  king  wanting  money  for  his  expedition 
against  his  brother,  Robert  of  Normandy,  tried 
to  persuade  Anselm  to  allow  the  Church  lands, 
bestowed  since  Lanfranc's  death  on  vassals  of  the 
crown  on  tenure  of  military  service,  to  remain  with 
their  holders.  He  was  answered  by  steady  refusal. 
Had  Anselm  yielded,  he  would  have  been  a  party  to 
the  alienation  of  lands,  that,  as  part  of  the  property 
of  the  see,  he  was  bound  to  administer  for  the 
common  good  ;  he  would  have  been  a  party  not 
only  to  the  spoiling  of  the  Church,  but  to  the 
robbery  of  the  poor  and  needy,  whose  claims,  in 
those  days,  to  temporal  assistance  from  Church 
estates  were  not  disputed.  Any  subsequent  restitu- 


12  Leaders  of  the  People         [1093- 

tion  of  such  lands  was  impossible,  he  foresaw,  if  it 
was  shown  that  the  archbishop  had  confirmed  what 
the  king  had  done. 

Then  came  the  question  of  a  present  of  money  to 
the  king.  Anselm  brought  five  hundred  marks, 
and,  but  for  his  counsellors  and  men  of  arms,  who 
told  him  the  archbishop  ought  to  have  given  twice 
as  much,  William  would  have  taken  the  gift  gladly 
enough.  As  it  was,  to  show  his  dissatisfaction,  the 
money  was  returned.  Anselm  went  boldly  to  the 
king  and  warned  him  that  money  freely  given  was 
better  than  a  forced  tribute.  To  this  frank  rebuke 
of  the  extortion  practised  by  the  king's  servants, 
William  answered  that  he  wanted  neither  his  money, 
nor  his  preaching,  nor  his  company.  Anselm  retired 
not  altogether  displeased  at  the  refusal,  for  too 
many  of  the  clergy  bought  church  offices  by  these 
free  gifts  after  they  were  instituted.  In  vain  his 
friends  urged  him  to  seek  the  king's  favour  by 
increasing  his  present,  Anselm  gave  the  five  hundred 
marks  to  the  poor,  and  shook  his  head  at  the  idea  of 
buying  the  king's  favour. 

But  if  Anselm  declined  to  walk  in  the  path  of 
corruption  to  oblige  the  king,  William  was  equally 
resolute  to  make  the  path  of  righteousness  a  hard 
road  for  the  archbishop. 

In  February,  1094,  when  the  Red  King  was  at 
Hastings  waiting  to  cross  to  Normandy,  Anselm 
appealed  to  him  to  sanction  a  council  of  bishops, 
whose  decisions  approved  by  the  crown  should  have 
the  authority  of  law.  There  were  two  things  for 
such  a  council  to  do  :  (i)  stop  the  open  vice  and 
profligacy  which  ravaged  the  land  ;  (2)  find  abbots 
for  the  many  monasteries  then  without  heads.  In 


-i  ICQ]  Archbishop  Anselm  13 

Anselm's  words,  the  council  was  "to  restore  the  Chris- 
tian religion  which  was  well-nigh  dead  in  so  many." 

William  treated  the  request  with  angry  contempt, 
and  when  Anselm  sent  bishops  to  him  asking  why 
the  king  refused  him  friendship,  an  evasive  answer 
was  returned. 

"  Give  him  money,"  said  the  bishops  again  to 
Anselm,  "  if  you  want  peace  with  him.  Give  him  the 
five  hundred  marks,  and  promise  him  as  much  more, 
and  you  will  have  the  royal  friendship.  This,  it 
seems  to  us,  is  the  only  way  out  of  the  difficulty." 

But  it  was  not  Anselm's  way.  He  would  not  even 
offer  what  had  been  rejected.  "  Besides,  the  greater 
part  of  it  was  spent  on  the  poor." 

William  burst  out  into  wrathful  speech  when  he 
was  told  of  this  reply.  "  Never  will  I  hold  him  as 
my  father  and  archbishop,  and  ever  shall  I  hate  him 
with  bitter  hatred.  I  hated  him  much  yesterday, 
and  to-day  I  hate  him  still  more." 

A  year  later  (March,  1095)  at  a  great  council  of 
bishops  and  nobles,  held  at  the  castle  of  Rocking- 
ham,  the  king's  hatred  had  full  vent.  From  the  first 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  received  from  the 
Pope  a  pallium,  the  white  woollen  stole  with  four 
crosses,  which  was  "  the  badge  of  his  office  and 
dignity,"1  and  Anselm  was  anxious  to  journey  to 
Rome  to  obtain  his  pallium  from  Pope  Urban.  Wil- 
liam objected  to  this  on  the  ground  that  there  was 
another  claimant  to  the  papacy,  and  that  until  he 
had  decided  who  was  the  rightful  pope  no  one  in 
England  had  a  right  to  do  so.  In  vain  Anselm 

1  No  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  has  received  the  pallium  since 
Cranmer,  but  the  sign  of  it  remains  in  the  archiepiscopal  arms  of 
Canterbury. 


14  Leaders  of  the  People         [logs- 

pointed  out  that  he,  with  all  Normandy,  had  acknow- 
ledged Urban  before  he  had  become  archbishop. 
William  retorted  angrily  that  Anselm  could  only 
keep  his  faith  to  the  Apostolic  See  by  breaking  his 
faith  to  the  king. 

The  council  of  Rockingham  met  to  settle  the 
question — not  the  question  of  the  supremacy  of 
Rome  in  Western  Christendom1 — but  the  question 
whether,  in  England,  there  was  any  higher  authority 
than  the  crown.  William  did  not  pretend  to 
dispute  the  papal  supremacy  in  the  Church.  His 
claim  was  that  the  king  alone  must  first  acknow- 
ledge the  pope  before  any  of  his  subjects  could  do 
so.  In  reality  the  king's  one  desire  was  "  to  take 
from  Anselm  all  authority  for  maintaining  the 
Christian  religion.  For  as  long  as  any  one  in  all 
the  land  was  said  to  hold  any  power  except  through 
him,  even  in  the  things  of  God,  it  seemed  to  him 
that  the  royal  dignity  was  diminished."  (Eadmer.) 
William  acknowledged  Pope  Urban  readily  enough, 
but  he  would  have  Archbishop  Anselm  understand 
that  the  papacy  must  be  acknowledged  by  per- 
mission of  the  king  of  England.  That  was  the 
real  ground  of  contention  between  these  two  men  : 
was  there  any  power  on  earth  higher  in  England 
than  the  English  crown  ?  According  to  William,  to 
appeal  to  Rome  was  to  dispute  the  absolutism  of  the 
crown.  Anselm  maintained  that  in  all  things  of 
God  he  must  render  obedience  to  the  Chief 
Shepherd  and  Prince  of  the  Church,  to  the  Vicar 

1  "  No  one  in  those  days  imagined  Christianity  without  Christendom, 
and  Christendom  without  a  Pope  :  and  all  these  bishops  understood 
exactly  as  Anselm  did  the  favourite  papal  text,  '  Thou  art  Peter,  and  on 
this  rock  I  will  build  my  Church.'  Nobody  in  those  days  doubted  the 
divine  authority  of  the  Pope." — Church,  Saint  Anselm. 


Archbishop  Anselm  15 

of  St.  Peter  ;  and  in  matters  of  earthly  dignity  he 
must  render  counsel  and  service  to  his  lord  the  king. 

The  bishops  at  Rockingham  were  the  king's 
men.  Many  of  them  had  bought  their  bishoprics, 
all  were  afraid  of  the  royal  displeasure.  The  stand 
made  by  Anselm,  unsupported  though  he  was,  did 
something  to  inspire  a  better  courage  in  the  ranks  of 
the  clergy1 ;  but  in  that  Lent  of  1095  there  was  no 
sign  of  support  for  the  archbishop.  William  only 
wanted  to  break  the  will  of  this  resolute  old  man, 
the  one  man  in  all  the  kingdom  who  dared  to  have 
a  mind  and  utterance  of  his  own,  and  the  mitred 
creatures  of  the  king  supported  their  lord  even  to 
the  point  of  recommending  the  forcible  deposition 
of  Anselm  from  his  see,  or  at  least  of  depriving  him 
of  the  staff  and  ring  of  office.  With  one  consent 
the  bishops  accepted  the  king's  suggestion  of 
renouncing  all  obedience  to  Anselm. 

But  the  barons  were  not  so  craven.  To  the 
king's  threat,  "  No  man  shall  be  mine,  who  will  be 
his "  (Anselm's),  the  nobles  said  bluntly  that  not 
having  taken  any  oath  of  fealty  to  the  archbishop 
they  could  not  abjure  it.  And  Anselm  was  their 
archbishop.  "  It  is  his  work  to  govern  the  Christian 
religion  in  this  land,  and  we  who  are  Christians 
cannot  deny  his  guidance  while  we  live  here." 

The  three  days'  conference  at  Rockingham  ended 
in  disappointment  to  the  hopes  of  William  of  absolute 
autocracy,  and  in  general  contempt  for  the  prelates 
whose  abject  servility  had  availed  nothing. 

Anselm  alone  stood  higher  in  the  eyes  of  the  men 

1  "The  boldness  of  Anselm's  attitude  not  only  broke  the  tradition 
of  ecclesiastical  servitude,  but  infused  through  the  nation  at  large  a  new 
spirit  of  independence." — J.  R.  Green. 


1 6  Leaders  of  the  People         [1093- 

of  England,  and  greater  was  the  ill-will  of  William. 
For  another  two  years  Anselm  held  his  ground 
against  the  king.  The  pallium  was  brought  from 
Rome  by  Walter,  Bishop  of  Albano,  and  placed  on 
the  altar  at  Canterbury,  and  Anselm  was  content 
to  take  it  from  the  altar.  William  had  written  in 
vain  to  Pope  Urban  praying  for  the  deposition  of 
Anselm,  and  promising  a  large  annual  tribute  to 
Rome  if  his  prayer  was  granted.  The  pope,  of 
course,  declined  to  do  anything  of  the  sort,  and 
William  had  to  make  the  best  of  the  situation.  He 
wanted  money  for  his  own  purposes,  and  his  barons 
were  now  against  him  in  his  quarrel  with  the  arch- 
bishop. For  a  time  William  adopted  a  semblance 
of  peace  with  Anselm,  but  his  anger  soon  blazed 
out  again.  The  ground  of  complaint  this  time  was 
that  the  soldiers  whom  the  archbishop  had  sent  to 
the  king  for  his  military  expedition  against  Wales 
were  inadequate — without  proper  equipment,  and 
unfit  for  service.  The  archbishop  was  summoned  to 
appear  before  the  King's  Court  to  "do  the  king  right." 
From  the  time  of  his  acceptance  of  the  arch- 
bishopric, Anselm  had  been  hoping  against  hope 
that  the  king  would  support  him,  as  the  Conqueror 
had  supported  Lanfranc,  in  the  building  up  of  the 
Christian  religion  in  England — this  summons  to 
the  King's  Court  was  the  death-blow  to  all  these 
hopes.  The  defendant  in  the  King's  Court  was  at 
the  mercy  of  the  king,  who  could  pronounce  what- 
ever judgment  he  pleased.1  Anselm  returned  no 
answer  to  the  summons,  but  his  mind  was  made  up. 

1  "  When  in  Anglo-Norman  times  you  speak  of  the  '  King's  Court,' 
it  is  only  a  phrase  for  the  king's  despotism." — Sir  F.  Palgrave,  History 
of  Normandy  and  England. 


-i  ic>9]  Archbishop  Anselm  17 

"  Having  knowledge  that  the  king's  word  ruled 
all  judgment  in  the  King's  Court,  where  nothing  was 
listened  to  except  what  the  king  willed,  it  seemed  to 
Anselm  unbecoming  that  he  should  contend,  as  if 
disputing,  as  litigants  do,  about  a  matter  of  words, 
and  should  submit  the  justice  of  his  cause  to  the 
judgment  of  a  court  where  neither  law,  nor  equity, 
nor  reason  prevailed.  So  he  held  his  peace,  and 
gave  no  answer  to  the  messenger."  (Eadmer.) 

From  the  despotism  of  the  Red  King  Anselm 
would  turn  for  justice  to  the  centre  of  Christendom. 
In  England  he  was  impotent  to  stem  the  evil  that 
flowed  from  the  savage  absolutism  of  the  throne. 
All  that  one  man  could  do  to  resist  the  royal 
tyranny  Anselm  had  done,  and  now  this  summons  to 
the  King's  Court  was  the  final  answer  to  all  his 
efforts  to  restrain  a  lawless  king,  and  to  promote  the 
Christian  religion  in  England.  He  would  not  go 
through  the  farce  of  pleading  in  the  King's  Court, 
where  judgment  was  settled  by  the  unbridled  caprice 
of  the  king,  self-respect  forbade  the  archbishop  from 
that ;  he  would  appeal  to  the  only  court  on  earth 
higher  than  the  courts  of  kings — the  court  whose 
head,  in  those  days,  was  the  head  of  Christendom.1 

1  "  The  see  of  St.  Peter  was  the  acknowledged  constitutional  centre  of 
spiritual  law  in  the  West.  ...  It  was  looked  upon  as  the  guide  and 
regulator  of  teaching,  the  tribunal  and  court  from  which  issued  the 
oracles  of  right  and  discipline,  the  judgment  seat  to  which  an  appeal 
was  open  to  all,  and  which  gave  sentence  on  wrong  and  vice  without 
fear  or  favour,  without  respect  of  persons,  even  the  highest  and  the 
mightiest.  ...  If  ever  there  was  a  time  when  the  popes  honestly 
endeavoured  to  carry  out  the  idea  of  their  office,  it  was  just  at  this 
period  of  the  Middle  Ages.  They  attempted  to  erect  an  independent 
throne  of  truth  and  justice  above  the  passions  and  the  force  which 
reigned  in  the  world  around." — Church,  Saint  Anselm. 

"  Under  the  rule  of  William  the  Red,  law  had  become  unlaw,  and  in 
appealing  from  him  to  the  apostolic  throne  Anselm  might  deem  he  was 
appealing  from  mere  force  and  fraud  to  the  only  shadow  of  right  that 
was  still  left  on  earth." — Freeman,  Norman  Conquest,  Vol.  V. 


1 8  Leaders  of  the  People         [1093- 

William  dropped  the  summons  to  the  King's 
Court,  and  for  a  time  refused  permission  to  Anselm 
to  leave  the  country.  Bishops  and  barons  now 
urged  Anselm  not  to  persist  in  his  appeal  to  Rome. 
But  the  archbishop  was  resolute,  and  in  the  autumn 
of  1097  the  king  yielded,  and  Anselm  left  the 
country.1 

The  first  campaign  against  despotism  in  England 
was  over — the  battle  was  to  be  renewed  when 
Henry  I.  wore  the  crown. 

At  Rome  Pope  Urban,  with  all  the  goodwill  in 
the  world,  and  with  a  very  real  affection  and  regard 
for  Anselm,  could  do  nothing  against  the  Red  King 
except  rebuke  his  envoys,  and  do  honour  to  the 
much-tried  archbishop.  Anselm  himself  prevented 
the  excommunication  of  William  when  it  was  pro- 
posed at  the  Council  of  Bari,  October,  1098. 

But  Pope  Urban  would  not  allow  Anselm  to 
resign  his  archbishopric,  and  this  in  spite  of  all 
Anselm's  entreaties. 

In  the  spring  of  1099  came  a  General  Council  at 

1  "  In  England  Anselm  had  stood  only  for  right  and  liberty  ;  he,  the 
chief  witness  for  religion  and  righteousness,  saw  all  round  him  vice 
rampant,  men  spoiled  of  what  was  their  own — justice,  decency,  honour 
trampled  under  foot.  Law  was  unknown,  except  to  ensnare  and 
oppress.  The  King's  Court  was  the  instrument  of  one  man's  selfish  and 
cruel  will,  and  of  the  devices  of  a  cunning  and  greedy  minister.  The 
natural  remedies  of  wrong  were  destroyed  and  corrupted  ;  the  king's 
peace,  the  king's  law,  the  king's  justice,  to  which  men  in  those  days 
looked  for  help,  could  only  be  thought  of  in  mocking  contrast  to  the 
reality.  Against  this  energetic  reign  of  misrule  and  injustice,  a  resist- 
ance as  energetic  was  wanted  ;  and  to  resist  it  was  felt  to  be  the  call 
and  bounden  duty  of  a  man  in  Anselm's  place.  He  resisted,  as  was  the 
way  in  those  days,  man  to  man,  person  to  person,  in  outright  fashion 
and  plain-spoken  words.  He  resisted  lawlessness,  wickedness,  oppres- 
sion, corruption.  When  others  acquiesced  in  the  evil  state,  he  refused  ; 
and  further,  he  taught  a  lesson  which  England  has  since  largely  learned, 
though  in  a  very  different  way.  He  taught  his  generation  to  appeal 
from  force  and  arbitrary  will  to  law.  It  was  idle  to  talk  of  appealing  to 
law  in  England  ;  its  time  had  not  yet  come." — Church,  Saint  Anselm. 


-i  109]  Archbishop  Anselm  19 

Rome — at  which  Anselm  assisted — a  council  re- 
markable for  its  decision  against  allowing  clergy  to 
receive  investiture  of  churches  from  the  hands  of 
laymen,  and  by  so  doing  to  become  the  vassals  of 
temporal  lords.  Excommunication  was  declared  to 
be  the  penalty  for  all  who  gave  or  received  Church 
appointments  on  such  conditions. 

It  was  at  the  close  of  this  council  that  an  out- 
spoken Bishop  of  Lucca  called  attention  to  Anselm's 
case.  "  One  sits  amongst  us  in  silence  and  meek- 
ness who  has  come  from  the  far  ends  of  the  earth. 
His  very  silence  cries  aloud.  His  humility  and 
patience,  so  gentle  and  so  deep,  as  they  rise  to  God 
should  set  us  on  fire.  This  one  man  has  come  here, 
wronged  and  afflicted,  seeking  judgment  and  justice 
of  the  Apostolic  See.  And  now  this  is  the  second 
year,  and  what  help  has  he  found  ?" 

Pope  Urban  answered  that  attention  should  be 
given,  but  nothing  further  was  done. 

Anselm  left  Rome  and  went  to  Lyons,  remaining 
in  France  until  the  death  of  William  in  August, 
1 100.  Henry  was  at  once  chosen  king  in  his  room, 
and  crowned  at  Westminster  three  days  after  his 
brother's  death.  Six  weeks  later,  at  Henry's  earnest 
request — he  prayed  him  "to  come  back  like  a  father 
to  his  son  Henry  and  the  English  people  " — Anselm 
landed  at  Dover  and  returned  to  take  up  the  task 
allotted  to  him  on  his  consecration  as  archbishop. 

Henry  at  the  outset  of  his  reign  promised  "God 
and  all  the  people  "  that  the  old  scandals  of  selling  and 
farming  out  the  Church  lands  should  be  stopped, 
and  "  to  put  down  all  unrighteousness  that  had  been 
in  his  brother's  time,  and  to  hold  the  best  laws  that 
ever  stood  in  any  king's  day  before  him."  That  this 


2O  Leaders  of  the  People         [logs- 

charter  was  of  value  may  be  taken  from  the  verdict 
on  the  king  by  the  Chronicler  of  the  time.  "  Good 
man  he  was  and  great  awe  there  was  of  him.  No 

O 

man  durst  misdo  against  another  in  his  day.  He 
made  peace  for  man  and  beast.  Whoso  carried  a 
burden  of  gold  and  silver  no  man  durst  do  him 
wrong." 

Two  evils  that  pressed  very  hardly  on  the  mass 
of  hard-working  people,  the  devastation  that  attended 
the  king's  progress  through  the  land1,  and  the  coin- 
ing of  false  money,  were  at  Anselm's  instigation 
checked  by  the  king. 

But  with  all  Henry's  desire  for  the  restoration  of 
religion  and  law  in  the  land,  he  was  the  Conqueror's 
son,  and  for  Anselm  the  struggle  against  absolutism 
in  government  was  not  yet  over.  Only  now  the 
battle  was  not  with  a  fierce,  untamed  despot  like  the 
Red  King,  but  with  an  autocrat  of  an  even  more 
formidable  type,  a  stern  man  of  business,  in  whose 
person  alone  must  be  found  the  source  of  all  law 
and  order,  and  who  would  brook  no  questioning  of 
the  royal  will. 

At  the  beginning  of  his  reign  Henry  found  the 
archbishop's  loyalty  and  good  sense  invaluable.  As 
Lanfranc  had  stood  by  the  Conqueror  in  a  marriage 
which  was  objectionable  from  the  point  of  view  of 
Church  law,  so  Anselm  stood  by  his  son  when  he 

1  "  No  discipline  restrained  them  (the  king's  attendants) ;  they  plun- 
dered, they  devastated,  they  destroyed.  What  they  found  in  the  houses 
which  they  invaded  and  could  not  consume,  they  took  to  market  to  sell 
for  themselves  or  they  burnt  it.  If  it  was  liquor  they  would  bathe  the 
feet  of  their  horses  in  it  or  pour  it  on  the  ground.  It  shames  me  to 
recall  the  cruelties  they  inflicted  on  the  fathers  of  families  and  the 
insults  on  their  wives  and  daughters.  J^nd  so,  whenever  the  king's 
coming  was  known  beforehand,  people  fled  from  their  houses  and  hid 
themselves  and  their  goods,  as  far  as  they  could,  in  the  woods  or  wherever 
safety  might  be  found." — Eadmer. 


Archbishop  Anselm  21 

sought  the  hand  of  Edith,  daughter  of  the  sainted 
Queen  Margaret  of  Scotland.  Here  the  objection 
to  the  marriage  was  not  on  the  grounds  of  affinity  or 
consanguinity,  but  in  the  fact  that  Edith  was  an 
inmate  of  the  convent  at  Romsey,  and,  it  was  alleged, 
a  professed  nun.  Edith  insisted  that  she  had  but 
taken  refuge  in  the  convent  to  obtain  the  protection 
of  her  aunt  Christina,  the  abbess,  and  she  had  worn 
the  habit  of  a  nun  as  a  safeguard  against  the  brutal 
passions  of  the  Red  King  and  his  courtiers.  The 
fear  of  violence  at  the  hands  of  the  Normans  had 
driven  women  to  take  the  veil,  and  Lanfranc  had 
been  known  to  grant  release  from  vows  taken  under 
such  mortal  pressure.  Anselm  was  not  the  man  to 
exalt  the  letter  of  the  law  above  the  spirit  of  liberty. 
He  was  content  that  a  council  of  the  great  men  in 
Church  and  State  should  hold  an  inquiry,  and  on 
their  verdict  declaring  Edith  free  of  her  vows,  the 
archbishop  gave  his  blessing  on  the  marriage. 

The  same  great  qualities  of  loyalty  and  good 
sense  made  Anselm  stand  by  the  king  when  the 
Norman  lords,  pricked  on  by  Ranulf  the  Torch,  the 
rascally  Bishop  of  Durham  (who  had  escaped  from 
imprisonment  in  the  Tower  by  making  his  gaolers 
drunk),  and  hating  Henry  for  "his  English  ways," 
proposed  to  back  up  Robert  of  Normandy  in  his 
attempts  to  seize  the  crown.  According  to  Eadmer, 
but  for  Anselm's  faithfulness  and  labours,  which 
turned  the  scale  when  so  many  were  wavering,  King 
Henry  would  have  lost  the  sovereignty  of  the  realm 
of  England  at  that  time. 

But  Anselm's  services  to  the  king  are  of  small 
account  by  the  side  of  his  services  to  English  liberty, 
and  Anselm's  resistance  to  Henry's  demands  for  an 


22  Leaders  of  the  People         [1093- 

absolute  monarchy  was  of  lasting  influence  in  the 
centuries  that  followed.1 

The  struggle  began  when  Henry  called  upon 
Anselm  for  a  new  declaration  of  homage  to  the 
crown,  and  required  him  to  receive  the  archbishopric 
afresh  by  a  new  act  of  investiture.  This  was  a 
claim  that  had  never  been  made  before.  "It  imported 
that  on  the  death  of  the  sovereign  the  archbishop's 
commission  expired,  that  his  office  was  subordinate 
and  derivative,  and  the  dignity  therefore  reverted  to 
the  crown."  (Sir  F.  Palgrave.) 

Anselm  met  the  demand  with  the  answer  that 
such  a  course  was  impossible.  Nay,  the  very  ecclesi- 
astical "  customs  "  which  for  some  time  past  had  given 
the  appointment  of  bishops  and  abbots  to  the  crown, 
and  had  made  the  bishops  "the  king's  men"  by  oblig- 
ing them  to  do  homage  and  to  receive  investiture  of 
their  office  with  ring  and  staff  at  the  royal  hands,  were 
now  impossible  for  Anselm.  The  Council  at  the 
Lateran,  at  which  Anselm  had  been  present,  had 
forbidden  the  bishops  of  the  Church  to  become  the 
vassals  of  the  kings  of  the  earth,  and  Anselm  was 
not  the  man  to  question  this  decision.  He  had  seen 
only  too  much,  under  William  the  Red,  of  the  curse 
of  royal  supremacy  in  the  Church.  He  had  stood  up 
alone  against  the  iniquities  of  misrule,  just  because 
the  bishops,  who  should  have  been  pastors  and  over- 
seers of  a  Christian  people,  were  the  sworn  creatures 
of  the  king.  Henceforth  it  was  forbidden  by  the 
authority  that  rested  in  the  seat  of  St.  Peter  at  Rome 
for  a  bishop  to  receive  consecration  as  a  king's  vassal. 

1  "  If  the  Church  had  continued  to  buttress  the  thrones  of  the  kings 
whom  it  annointed,  or  if  the  struggle  had  terminated  in  an  undivided 
victory,  all  Europe  would  have  sunk  down  under  a  Byzantine  or  Musco- 
vite despotism." — Acton,  History  of  Freedom  in  Christianity. 


-i  log]  Archbishop  Anselm  23 

But  if  Anselm  would  be  no  party  to  what  had 
become  an  intolerable  evil,  Henry  would  not  give 
up  the  rights  his  father  had  exercised  without  a 
contest.  He  was  willing  to  do  his  best  for  the 
Church,  but  it  must  be  in  his  own  way.  "  Pledging 
himself  in  his  own  heart  and  mind  not  to  abate  a 
jot  of  his  supremacy  over  the  clergy,  he  would 
exercise  his  authority  in  Church  affairs  somewhat 
more  decently  than  his  father,  and  a  great  deal 
more  than  his  brother;  but  that  was  all."  (Sir  F. 
Palgrave.) 

Both  Henry  and  Anselm  recognized  the  gravity 
of  the  issue.  Were  the  bishops  and  abbots  to 
continue  to  receive  investiture  from  the  king  they 
were  "his  men,"  and  his  autocracy  was  established 
over  all.  Stop  the  investiture  and  the  bishops  were 
first  and  chiefly  the  servants  of  the  Most  High, 
acknowledging  a  sovereignty  higher  than  that 
exercised  by  the  princes  of  this  world,  and  pre- 
ferring loyalty  to  the  Church  Catholic  and  its 
Father  at  Rome,  to  blind  obedience  to  the  crown. 

In  brief,  the  question  in  dispute  really  was — Was 
there,  or  was  there  not,  any  power  on  earth  greater 
than  the  English  crown  ? — a  question  which  no 
English  king  before  Henry  VIII.  answered  success- 
fully in  the  negative.  In  contending  for  the  freedom 
of  the  bishops  of  the  Church  from  vassalage  to  the 
crown,  Anselm  was  contending  for  the  existence  of 
an  authority  to  which  even  kings  should  pay 
allegiance.  It  was  not  the  rights  of  the  clergy 
that  were  at  stake,  for  the  terrors  of  excom- 
munication did  not  prevent  bishops  from  receiving 
consecration  on  Henry's  terms,  and  Anselm  stood 
alone  now,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Red  King,  in  the 


24  Leaders  of  the  People  [logs- 

resistance  to  despotism.  It  was  the  feeling  and 
the  knowledge,  which  Anselm  shared  with  the  best 
churchmen  of  his  day,  that  great  as  the  power  of 
the  king  must  be,  it  was  a  bad  thing  for  such  power 
to  exist  unchecked,  and  that  it  were  well  for  the 
world  that  its  mightiest  monarchs  should  know 
there  was  a  spiritual  dominion  given  to  the  suc- 
cessor of  St.  Peter,  and  to  his  children,  a  dominion 
of  divine  foundation  that  claimed  obedience  even 
from  kings. 

Anselm  put  it  to  the  king  that  the  canons  of 
the  Church,  and  the  decrees  of  a  great  council 
had  forbidden  the  "customs"  of  investiture  which 
the  king  claimed  ;  and  he  pleaded  that  he  was  an 
old  man,  and  that  unless  he  could  work  with  the 
king  on  the  acceptance  of  the  Church  canons,  it 
was  no  use  his  remaining  in  England,  "for  he 
could  not  hold  communion  with  those  who  broke 
these  laws "  :  Henry,  for  his  part,  was  much  dis- 
turbed. It  was  a  grave  matter  to  lose  the  investi- 
ture of  churches,  and  the  homage  of  prelates  ;  it 
was  a  grave  matter,  too,  to  let  Anselm  leave  the 
country  while  he  himself  was  hardly  established 
in  the  kingdom.  "  On  the  one  side  it  seemed 
to  him  that  he  should  be  losing,  as  it  were, 
half  of  his  kingdom  ;  on  the  other,  he  feared  lest 
Anselm  should  make  his  brother  Robert  King  of 
England," — for  Robert  might  easily  be  brought  to 
submit  to  the  Apostolic  See  if  he  could  be  made 
king  on  such  terms. 

Henry  suggested  an  appeal  to  the  pope  on  the 
question  of  the  right  of  the  crown  to  "  invest "  the 
bishops,  and  Anselm,  who  all  along  was  anxious 
for  peace  —  if  peace  could  be  obtained  without 


-i  109]       •     Archbishop  Anselm  25 

acknowledgment  of  royal  absolutism  —  at  once 
agreed. 

The  pope,  of  course,  could  not  grant  Henry's 
request.  To  allow  the  high  offices  of  the  Church 
to  be  disposed  of  at  the  caprice  of  kings  and  princes, 
without  any  recognition  of  the  sacredness  of  these 
offices,  to  admit  that  the  chief  ministers  of  religion 
were  first  and  foremost  "the  king's  men,"  seemed 
to  Pope  Paschal,  as  it  seemed  to  Anselm,  a  con- 
cession to  evil,  and  the  establishment  of  a  principle 
which  experience  had  proved  thoroughly  vicious 
and  mischievous. 

Then  for  nearly  three  years  a  correspondence 
dragged  on  between  Henry  and  the  pope,  neither 
wishing  for  an  open  rupture,  and  in  the  meantime, 
Henry,  backed  by  most  of  the  bishops  and  nobles 
in  setting  at  nought  the  canons  which  had  forbidden 
investiture,  proposed  to  go  on  appointing  and  in- 
vesting new  bishops  as  before. 

Finally,  the  king  appealed  to  Anselm  to  go  to 
Rome  "and  try  what  he  could  do  with  the  pope, 
lest  the  king  by  losing  the  rights  of  his  predecessors 
should  be  disgraced." 

Anselm  was  now  (1103)  an  old  man  of  seventy, 
but  he  agreed  to  go  ;  only  "  he  could  do  nothing 
to  the  prejudice  of  the  liberty  of  the  Church  or  his 
own  honour."  What  Henry  hoped  for  was  that  the 
pope  would  grant  some  personal  dispensation  in  the 
matter  of  the  royal  "customs,"  and  he  had  tried  to 
persuade  Anselm  that  such  dispensation  was  sure 
to  be  granted.  Anselm  did  not  believe  the  dis- 
pensation possible  or  desirable,  but  left  the  decision 
with  the  acknowledged  head  of  Christendom  at 
Rome ;  and  though  for  another  three  years  Henry 


26  Leaders  of  the  People         [1093- 

urged  his  suit,  no  dispensation  could  be  wrung  from 
the  pope.  All  that  the  pope  would  grant  was  that 
the  bishops  might  do  "homage"  to  the  crown  for 
their  temporal  rights. 

At  last,  in  April,  1106,  Anselm  returned  to 
England.  The  bishops  themselves,  who  had  sided 
with  the  king  against  him,  implored  him  to  return, 
so  wretched  had  become  the  state  of  religion  in 
England  in  his  absence.  They  promised  to  do  his 
commands  and  to  fight  with  him  the  battle  of  the 
Lord. 

Henry,  fresh  from  the  conquest  of  Normandy, 
sent  word  of  his  good-will,  and  of  his  desire  for 
the  archbishop's  presence.  The  long  drawn-out 
battle  was  over,  and  the  king  had  to  be  content  with 
"homage,"  and  to  resign  the  claim  to  investiture. 

"On  August  ist  (1107)  an  assembly  of  bishops, 
abbots,  and  chief  men  of  the  realm,  was  held  in 
London,  in  the  king's  palace,  and  for  three  days 
the  matter  of  the  investiture  of  churches  was  fully 
discussed  between  the  king  and  the  bishops  in 
Anselm's  absence.  Then,  in  the  presence  of 
Anselm  and  before  the  whole  multitude,  the  king 
granted  and  decreed  that  henceforth  and  for  ever 
no  one  should  be  invested  in  England  with  bishopric 
or  abbey  by  staff  and  ring,  either  by  the  king  or  the 
hand  of  any  layman  ;  while  Anselm  allowed  that  no 
one  chosen  for  a  bishopric  should  be  refused  con- 
secration for  having  done  homage  to  the  king. 
This  having  been  settled,  the  king,  by  the  counsel 
of  Anselm  and  the  chief  men  of  the  realm,  appointed 
priests  in  nearly  all  those  churches  in  England 
which  had  long  been  widowed  of  their  pastors." 
(Eadmer.) 


-i  ICQ]  Archbishop  Anselm  27 

Victory  rested  with  Anselm.  The  old  archbishop 
had  done  his  best  for  the  liberty  of  religion,  and  by 
contending  for  this  liberty  he  had  wrought  for 
common  freedom.1  Later  ages  and  struggles  were 
to  bring  out  more  clearly  that  some  measure  of 
political  and  social  liberty  must  follow  the  demand 
for  freedom  in  religion.  "  Religious  forces,  and 
religious  forces  alone,  have  had  sufficient  influence 
to  ensure  practical  realisation  for  political  ideas." 
(Figgis,  Studies  of  Political  Thought."] 

Anselm's  life  was  nearly  over,  his  work  was  accom- 
plished, a  philosophical  treatise  "Concerning  the 
agreement  of  Foreknowledge,  Predestination  and 
the  Grace  of  God  with  Free  Will "  was  written  with 
difficulty  in  the  last  years.  Then  his  appetite  failed 
him,  and  all  food  became  loathsome.  At  last  he  was 
persuaded  to  take  to  his  bed,  and  on  April  2ist,  1 109 
— the  Wednesday  of  Holy  Week  —  at  daybreak 
Anselm  passed  away. 

Anselm's  name  has  long  been  enrolled  in  the 
calendar  of  the  saints  of  the  Church  Catholic,  no  less 
is  it  to  be  cherished  by  all  who  love  liberty.  Well 
may  it  be  said  of  him,  "he  was  ever  a  close  follower 
of  Truth,  and  walked  in  noble  companionship  with 
Pity  and  Courage."  Anselm's  plain  good  sense  and 
charity  were  conspicuous  in  his  benediction  of  the 
marriage  of  Henry  and  Edith,  but  these  great 
qualities  were  earlier  displayed  when  Lanfranc  con- 
sulted him  as  to  the  claims  of  the  English  Arch- 
bishop -^Elphege  to  be  canonised  as  a  martyr. 

1  "By  the  surrender  of  the  significant  ceremony  of  delivering  the 
bishopric  by  the  emblematic  staff  and  ring,  it  was  emphatically  put  on 
record  that  the  spiritual  powers  of  the  bishop  were  not  the  king's  to 
give ;  the  prescription  of  feudalism  was  broken."  —  Church,  Saint 
Anselm. 


28  Leaders  of  the  People         [1093- 

^Elphege  had  been  slain  by  the  Danes  for  refusing 
to  ransom  his  life  at  the  expense  of  his  tenants  ; 
and  Anselm  replied  to  Lanfranc  that  he  who  would 
die  rather  than  oppress  his  tenants  dies  for  justice' 
sake,  and  he  who  dies  for  justice  dies  a  martyr  for 
Christ. 

His  sympathy  and  humaneness  shone  out  a 
thousand  times.  There  is  the  story  Eadmer  tells  of 
an  abbot,  who  came  to  Anselm  at  Bee,  and  deplored 
that  he  could  do  no  good  with  the  boys  at  his 
monastery.  "In  spite  of  all  we  do  they  are  per- 
verse and  incorrigible,"  said  the  abbot,  despondently. 
"  We  are  always  beating  them,  but  they  only  get 
worse  :  and  though  we  constrain  them  in  every  way 
we  can,  it's  all  of  no  use."  "  Constrain  them  !  " 
answered  Anselm.  "  Tell  me,  my  lord  abbot,  when 
you  plant  a  tree  in  your  garden,  do  you  so  tie  it  up 
that  it  cannot  stretch  forth  its  branches?  And  if 
you  did  so,  what  sort  of  tree  would  it  become  a  few 
years  hence  when  you  released  it  ?  But  this  is  just 
what  you  do  with  your  boys.  You  cramp  them  in 
with  terrors  and  threats  and  blows,  so  that  it  is  quite 
impossible  for  them  to  grow  or  enjoy  any  freedom. 
And  kept  down  in  this  way  their  temper  is  spoilt  by 
evil  thoughts  of  hatred  and  suspicion  against  you, 
and  they  put  down  all  you  do  to  ill-nature  and  dislike. 
Why  are  you  so  harsh  with  them  ?  Are  they  not 
human  beings  of  the  same  nature  as  yourself?  How 
would  you  like  to  be  treated  as  you  treat  them  ?  " 
The  abbot  was  finally  persuaded  that  he  had  been 
all  wrong.  "  We  have  wandered,"  he  said,  "  from 
the  way  of  truth,  and  the  light  of  discretion  hath  not 
shone  on  us." 

There  is  another  story  which  gives  Anselm's  pity 


-i  log]  Archbishop  Anselm  29 

and  feeling  of  kinship  with  the  whole  animal 
creation.  It  was  when  he  was  archbishop,  and  was 
riding  one  day  from  Windsor  to  Hayes  that  a  hare 
chased  by  the  dogs  of  some  of  his  company  took 
refuge  under  the  feet  of  his  horse.  Anselm  at  once 
pulled  up  and  forebade  the  hare  to  be  molested,  and 
when  his  escort  laughed  gleefully  at  the  capture,  the 
archbishop  said :  "  You  may  laugh,  but  it  is  no 
laughing  matter  for  this  poor  unhappy  creature, 
which  is  like  the  soul  of  a  departing  man  pursued 
by  evil  spirits.  Mortal  enemies  attack  it,  and  it 
flies  to  us  for  its  life  :  and  while  it  turns  to  us 
for  safety  we  laugh."  He  rode  on,  and  in  a  loud 
voice  forbade  the  dogs  to  touch  the  hare  ;  which, 
glad  to  be  at  liberty,  darted  off  to  the  fields  and 
woods. 

That  Anselm  never  wavered  in  his  tenderness  for 
the  weak  and  oppressed  may  be  learnt  from  the 
great  Church  Synod  held  at  Westminster  in 
1 1 02 — a  council  summoned  on  the  strong  request 
of  the  archbishop.  The  slave  trade  was  specially 
denounced  at  this  council  as  a  "  wicked  trade  used 
hitherto  in  England,  by  which  men  are  sold  like 
brute  animals,"  and  a  canon  was  drawn  up  to  that 
effect. 

Anselm's  enduring  courage  and  desire  for  truth 
are  conspicuous  all  his  life.  He  fought  single- 
handed  against  both  William  and  Henry,  and  no 
weight  of  numbers,  no  world-wise  talk  from  other 
prelates  could  make  him  budge.  If  he  withstood 
the  Red  King  and  his  court  at  Rockingham,  equally 
firm  was  he  in  withstanding  the  Norman  barons 
who  were  inclined  to  break  away  from  their  sworn 
allegiance  to  Henry.  No  Englishman  by  birth  or 


30  Leaders  of  the  People 

blood  was  Anselm,  for  he  was  born  at  Aosta,  and 
spent  the  greater  part  of  his  life  on  the  Continent, 
but  he  brought  to  England  the  finest  gifts  of  life, 
and  gave  them  freely  in  service  to  England's  liberty. 
He  withstood  an  absolutism  that  threatened  the 
total  enslavement  of  the  nation,  and  the  witness  he 
bore  to  liberty  was  taken  up  and  renewed  in  the 
centuries  that  followed.  "  Anselm  was  truly  a  great 
man.  So  good  that  he  was  held  a  saint  in  his  very 
lifetime,  so  meek  that  even  his  enemies  honoured 
him,  so  wise  that  he  was  the  foremost  thinker  of  his 
day,  and  the  forerunner  of  the  greatest  philosophers 
of  ours."  (F.  York  Powell.) 


Thomas  of  Canterbury 

The  Defender  of  the  Poor 
1162-1 170 


AUTHORITIES  :  Benedict  of  Peterborough  ;  Gamier  ; 
William  FitzStephen ;  John  of  Salisbury ;  Herbert  of 
Bosham ;  Alan  of  Tewkesbury ;  Edward  Grim  ;  Roger 
of  Pontigny  ;  William  of  Canterbury  ;  Robert  of  Crick- 
lade  —  Materials  for  the  History  of  Thomas  Becket, 
7  vols.  ;  Thomas  Saga  (Icelandic),  translated  by  Mag- 
nusson  ;  Giraldus  Cambrensis;  Gervase  of  Canterbury; 
William  of  Newburgh;  Roger  of  Hoveden,  III. ;  Ralph 
Diceto  (Rolls  Series) ;  Froude,  R.  H.  —  Remains, 
Vol.  3  ;  Life  of  Becket,  by  Canon  J.  C.  Robertson ; 
Life  of  St.  Thomas  Becket,  by  John  Morris,  S.J. ; 
Stubbs  —  Constitutional  History,  Vol.  I ;  Freeman  — 
Historical  Essays,  ist  Series ;  W.  H.  Hutton  — 
English  History  by  Contemporary  Writers — St.  Thomas 
of  Canterbury. 


THOMAS    A    BECKET 

(From  an  old  Engraving  after  Van  Eyck.) 


THOMAS  OF  CANTERBURY 
THE  DEFENDER  OF  THE  POOR 
1162-1170 

FIFTY  years  after  the  death  of  Anselm  the 
struggle  with  absolute  monarchy  had  to 
be  renewed  in  England,  and  again  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  was  the  antagonist 
of  the  crown,  standing  alone  for  the  most  part,  as 
Anselm  stood,  in  his  resistance  to  autocracy. 

The  contrast  is  great  between  the  upbringing  and 
character  of  Anselm  and  of  Thomas ;  but  both  men 
gave  valiant  service  in  the  cause  of  liberty  in 
England,  and  both  are  placed  in  the  calendar  of 
the  saints.  For  Thomas  and  Anselm  alike  the 
choice  was  between  the  favour  of  the  King  of 
England,  the  safe  broad  road  of  passive  obedience, 
and  the  following  of  the  call  of  conscience  on  the 
craggy  way  of  royal  displeasure;  and  to  the  ever- 
lasting honour  of  these  two  men,  and  of  the  religion 
they  professed,  they  chose  the  steep  and  narrow 
path  with  no  faltering  step,  and  followed  the  gleam, 
heedless  of  this  world's  glory,  heedless  of  life  itself. 

Thomas  was  no  monk  as  Anselm  was,  when  the 
king  nominated  him  for  the  archbishopric  of  Canter- 
bury. His  early  life  was  not  spent  in  the  cloister 
but  in  the  employment  of  a  wealthy  London  sheriff, 
in  the  office  of  Archbishop  Theobald,  at  Lambeth, 
and  as  Chancellor  of  England. 

The  son   of  gentle  parents — his    father   Gilbert 

33  4 


34  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

sometime  sheriff — "  London  citizens  of  the  middle 
class,  not  usurers  nor  engaged  in  business,  but  living 
well  on  their  own  income,"  according  to  FitzStephen, 
Thomas  was  the  first  Englishman  to  be  made  arch- 
bishop. His  gifts  marked  him  out  for  high  office. 
Theobald  had  sent  him  abroad  to  study  law  at  the 
great  school  at  Bologna,  and  at  the  age  of  36  made 
him  archdeacon  of  Canterbury,  at  that  time  "the 
dignity  in  the  Church  of  England  next  after  the 
bishops  and  abbots,  and  which  brought  him  an 
hundred  pounds  of  silver."  A  year  later,  1155,  the 
young  newly  crowned  king,  Henry  II.,  on  the  advice 
of  old  Archbishop  Theobald,  made  Thomas  the 
Chancellor.  Theobald,  anxious  about  the  present, 
and  apprehensive  for  the  future — for  the  king  was 
very  young,  and  those  about  him  were  known  to 
be  hostile  to  the  freedom  of  the  Church  and  willing 
to  treat  England  as  a  conquered  land — sought  to 
prevent  the  evils  which  seemed  to  be  at  hand  by 
making  Thomas  a  partner  of  the  King's  counsels. 
He  could  say,  after  ten  years'  experience,  that 
Thomas  was  high-principled  and  prudent,  wisely 
zealous  for  justice,  and  whole-hearted  for  the  free- 
dom of  the  Church,  and  he  held  forth  to  the  king  on 
the  wisdom,  the  courage  and  the  faithfulness  of  his 
archdeacon,  "and  the  admirable  sweetness  of  his 
manners." 

The  appointment  was  made,  nor  could  anyone 
say  that  it  was  ill  done,  or  that  Theobald  in  his 
recommendation,  or  Henry  II.  in  his  acceptance,  of 
Thomas  for  the  chancellorship  could  have  done 
better  for  England. 

The  chancellor  was  magnificent,  and  his  dignity 
was  accounted  second  from  the  king.  Nobles  sent 


-i  1 70]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  35 

their  children  to  Thomas  to  be  trained  in  his  service. 
The  king  commended  to  him  his  son,  the  heir  to 
the  throne.  Barons  and  knights  did  homage  to 
him.  On  his  embassy  to  the  French  king  never 
had  been  seen  such  a  retinue  of  followers,  and  such 
a  lavish  display  of  the  wealth  and  grandeur  of 
England.  The  proud  and  mighty  he  treated  with 
harshness  and  violence.  Yet  it  was  said,  by  those 
who  knew  him  intimately,  that  he  was  lowly  in  his 
own  eyes,  and  gentle  and  meek  to  those  who  were 
humble  in  heart.  And  in  the  courts  of  kings,  where 
chastity  is  never  commonly  extolled,  or  purity  of 
life  the  fashion,  Thomas,  the  chancellor,  was  known 
for  his  cleanness  of  living  and  his  unblemished 
honour.  Many  enemies  he  had,  many  who  hated 
him  for  his  power  ;  but  never  was  breath  of  scandal 
uttered  against  the  chancellor's  private  life,  or 
suggestion  made  that  the  carnal  lusts  and  appetites 
which,  unbridled,  play  havoc  with  men  great  and 
small,  could  claim  Thomas  for  their  subject. 

He  might  be  reproached  by  a  monk  for  that  he, 
being  an  archdeacon,  lived  so  secular  a  life,  wearing 
the  dress  of  a  courtier,  and  charging  on  the  field 
with  knights  in  France,  but  it  could  not  be  alleged 
that  church  or  realm  suffered  neglect  from  the 
chancellor.  "  By  divine  inspiration  and  the 
counsel  of  Thomas,  the  lord  king  did  not  long 
retain  vacant  bishoprics  and  abbacies,  so  that  the 
patrimony  of  the  Crucified  might  be  brought  into 
the  treasury,  as  was  afterwards  done,  but  bestowed 
them  with  little  delay  on  honourable  persons,  and 
according  to  God's  law."  (W.  FitzStephen.) 

The  close  friendship  and  warm  affection  of  the 
king  for  his  chancellor  were  known  to  all.  When 


36  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

the  day's  business  was  done  "  they  would  play  to- 
gether like  boys  of  the  same  age."  They  sat  together 
in  church  and  hall  and  rode  out  together.  "  Never 
in  Christian  times  were  there  two  men  more  of  one 
mind  or  better  friends."  It  was  natural  on  the 
death  of  Archbishop  Theobald,  in  1161,  that  people 
should  point  to  Thomas  as  his  successor,  though  the 
chancellor  shrank,  as  Anselm  had  done,  from  the 
post. 

"  I  know  three  poor  priests  in  England  any  one 
of  whom  I  would  rather  see  advanced  to  the  arch- 
bishopric than  myself,"  he  declared  earnestly,  when 
his  friend  the  prior  of  Leicester  (who  also  remon- 
strated with  him  for  his  unclerical  dress)  told  him 
the  rumours  of  the  court.  "  For  as  for  me,  if  I  was 
appointed,  I  know  the  king  so  through  and  through 
that  I  should  be  forced  either  to  lose  his  favour  or, 
which  God  forbid,  to  lay  aside  the  service  of  God." 

Thomas  uttered  the  same  warning  to  Henry 
when  the  king  proposed  the  primacy  to  him.  "  I 
know  certainly,"  he  said,  "  that  if  God  should  so  dis- 
pose that  this  happen,  you  would  soon  turn  away 
your  love,  and  the  favour  which  is  now  between  us 
would  be  changed  into  bitterest  hate.  I  know  that 
you  would  demand  many  things  in  Church  matters, 
for  already  you  have  demanded  them,  which  I  could 
never  bear  quietly,  and  the  envious  would  take  occa- 
sion to  provoke  an  endless  strife  between  us." 

But  Henry's  mind  was  made  up.  Residing 
largely  in  France,  he  would  have  Thomas,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  and  Chancellor,  to  rule  Eng- 
land as  his  vice-regent.  Six  years  had  Thomas  been 
the  king's  friend  and  chancellor,  but  the  king  did 
not  know  at  all  the  real  character  of  his  man,  or 


-i  1 70]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  37 

rather  it  was  inconceivable  to  the  royal  mind  that 
Thomas,  whom  the  king  had  raised  from  a  mere 
nobody,  from  Archdeacon  of  Canterbury,  an  impor- 
tant ecclesiastic  at  best,  to  the  chief  man  in  the 
realm,  should  ever  dare  set  himself  at  variance  with 
the  king's  will.  Henry,  with  his  untiring  energy, 
was  earnest  enough  for  good  government  in  Church 
and  State  under  an  absolute  monarchy,  and  he 
counted  on  greater  co-operation  with  Thomas  in 
carrying  out  his  plans,  were  the  latter  archbishop. 
Hitherto,  more  than  once  the  chancellor  had  suc- 
ceeded in  moderating  the  king's  outbursts  of  wrath 
against  some  hapless  offender,  but  he  had  never 
shown  himself  a  partisan  of  the  clergy  at  the  expense 
of  the  commonwealth,1  and  his  lack  of  pride  in  his 
order  had  even  incurred  rebuke,  so  little  of  the 
ecclesiastic  did  this  statesman  appear. 

Thomas  understood  the  king  better  than  the  king 
understood  his  chancellor.  But  his  protests  were  in 
vain.  He  was  as  surely  marked  for  the  arch- 
bishopric as  Anselm  had  been.  Bishops  of  the 
province  approved  and  the  monks  of  Canterbury 
duly  voted  for  the  king's  chancellor  in  common  con- 
sent, Gilbert  Foliot,  the  Bishop  of  Hereford,  and 

1  "  With  regard  to  Thomas'  dealings  with  the  Church,  if  one  thing  is 
clear  it  is  this — that  he  was  not  in  the  least  a  man  who  pushed  his  Order 
at  the  expense  of  his  loyalty.  More  than  once  he  refused  to  listen  to  an 
ecclesiastical  claim  against  the  king,  even  when  his  old  friend  Theobald 
was  behind  it :  he  was  perfectly  impartial :  he  taxed  churchmen  as  he 
taxed  laymen,  and  in  fact,  so  loyal  and  reasonable  was  he  that  Henry, 
when  he  made  him  archbishop,  seems  to  have  thought  that  he  was  wholly 
on  his  side.  There  were  innumerable  questions  to  be  decided  between 
Church  and  State.  Again  and  again  small  points  came  up  as  to  the 
appointment  of  this  man  or  the  other,  as  to  the  infliction  or. remission  of 
a  fine  ;  and  again  and  again  Thomas  decided  the  cause  and  advised  the 
king  on  the  merits  of  the  case.  .  .  .  He  was  as  zealous  now  for  the 
State  as  he  was  for  the  Church  afterwards.  There  he  stood  Chancellor 
of  England  ;  his  business  was  to  administer  the  laws,  and  he  knew  and 
did  his  business." — R.  H.  Benson,  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury. 


38  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

afterwards  of  London,  and  the  archbishop's  enemy 
to  the  end,  alone  opposing  the  election. 

"Then  the  archbishop-elect  was  by  the  king's  auth- 
ority declared  free  of  all  debts  to  the  crown  and  given 
free  to  the  Church  of  England,  and  in  that  freedom 
he  was  received  by  the  Church  with  the  customary 
hymns  and  words  of  praise."  (Herbert  of  Bosham.) 

On  June  2nd,  1162,  the  Saturday  after  Whit 
Sunday,  Thomas  was  ordained  priest  and  on  the 
following  day  consecrated  bishop.  (The  new  arch- 
bishop instituted  the  festival  of  Trinity  Sunday  to 
commemorate  his  consecration,  and  some  200  years 
later  the  festival  was  made  of  general  observance  in 
the  Catholic  Church.)  The  king  realised  the  mis- 
take he  had  made  within  a  year  of  the  consecration. 
The  brilliant  chancellor  was  no  sooner  archbishop 
than  he  turned  from  all  the  gaieties  of  the  world, 
and  while  no  less  a  statesman,  adopted  the  life  of  his 
monks — though  never  himself  a  monk — at  Canter- 
bury. Henceforth  Archbishop  Thomas  was  the 
unflinching  champion  of  the  poor  and  them  that  had 
no  helper,  the  resolute  defender  of  the  liberties  of 
the  Church  against  all  who  would  make  religion 
subject  to  the  autocracy  of  the  king  of  England. 

Thomas  was  forty-four  years  old,  in  the  full 
strength  of  his  manhood,  when  he  was  made  arch- 
bishop, and  for  eight  years  he  did  battle  with  the 
crown,  only  laying  down  his  charge  at  the  call  of 
martyrdom. 

The  first  disappointment  to  Henry  was  the  re- 
signation of  the  chancellor's  seal.1  It  was  clear  to 

1  "  The  only  instance  which  has  occurred  of  the  chancellorship  being- 
voluntarily  resigned  either  by  layman  or  ecclesiastic."  —  Campbell, 
Lives  of  the  Chancellors. 


-ii;o]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  39 

Thomas  that  he  could  no  longer  serve  the  crown  and 
do  the  work  of  a  Christian  bishop  at  the  same  time, 
and  he  had  accepted  with  full  sense  of  responsibility 
the  see  of  Canterbury.  There  was  no  room  for  the 
egotism  that  loves  power,  the  vaulting  ambition 
that  o'erleaps  itself,  or  even  the  self-deception  that 
persuades  a  man  holding  to  high  position  at  sacrifice 
of  principle  that  his  motive  is  disinterested,  in  St. 
Thomas  of  Canterbury.  More  than  once  England 
was  to  see  in  later  years  men  who  strove  vainly  to 
serve  with  equal  respect  the  Christian  religion  and 
the  royal  will — the  service  always  ended  in  the 
triumph  of  the  latter.  Thomas  was  far  too  clearly- 
sighted  to  imagine  such  joint  service  possible,  and 
for  him,  elected  and  consecrated  to  the  primacy  of 
the  English  Church,  there  was  no  longer  any  choice. 
As  chancellor,  keeping  his  conscience  clear,  he  had 
done  the  best  he  could  for  law  and  order  as  the 
king's  right  hand  man.  As  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury his  duty,  first  and  foremost,  was  to  maintain 
the  Christian  religion  and  defend  the  cause  of  the 
poor  and  needy. 

But  to  Henry  the  resignation  of  the  chancellor- 
ship was  an  act  of  desertion,  a  declared  challenge  to 
the  royal  supremacy.  Henry  II.  was  no  more  the 
man  than  his  grandfather  Henry  I.  had  been  to  brook 
anything  that  threatened  resistance  to  the  king's 
rule. 

Courtiers  who  hated  Thomas  were  always  at  hand 
to  poison  the  ears  of  the  king  by  defaming  the  arch- 
bishop, and  this,  says  William  FitzStephen,  was  the 
first  cause  of  the  trouble.  Another  cause  was  the 
hatred  of  the  king  for  the  clergy  of  England,  hatred 
provoked  by  the  notoriously  disreputable  lives  of 


4O  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

more  than  one  clerk  in  holy  orders.  The  battle 
between  Henry  and  Thomas  began  on  this  matter  of 
criminous  clerks. 

William  the  Conqueror  and  Lanfranc  recognizing 
that  the  Church,  strong  and  well  ordered,  made  for 
national  well-being,  had  set  up  ecclesiastical  courts 
wherein  all  matters  affecting  church  law  and  dis- 
cipline were  to  be  dealt  with  by  the  clergy,  to  the 
end  that  the  clergy  should  not  be  mixed  up  in  law- 
suits and  should  be  excluded  from  the  lay  courts. 
Henry  II.  was  not  satisfied  that  criminous  clerks 
were  adequately  dealt  with  in  these  ecclesiastical 
courts,  where  no  penalty  involving  bloodshed  might 
be  inflicted,  and  where  the  savage  punishments  of 
mutilation  had  no  place.  Thomas  was  as  anxious  as 
the  king  for  the  Church  to  be  purged  of  abuses,  but 
he  was  resolved  not  to  hand  over  offenders  to  the 
secular  arm.  The  archbishop  was  an  ardent 
reformer.  "He  plucked  up,  pulled  down,  scattered 
and  rooted  out  whatever  he  found  amiss  in  the  vine- 
yard of  the  Lord,"  wrote  a  contemporary  ;  but  he 
would  shelter  his  flock  as  far  as  he  could  by  the 
canon  law  from  the  hideous  cruelties  of  the  King's 
Courts.1  It  was  not  for  the  protection  of  the  clergy 
alone  the  archbishop  was  fighting  in  the  councils 
summoned  by  the  king  at  Westminster  in  1 163,  and 
at  Clarendon  in  1164. 

1  "  It  must  be  held  in  mind  that  the  archbishop  had  on  his  side  the 
Church  or  Canon  Law,  which  he  had  sworn  to  obey,  and  certainly  the 
law  courts  erred  as  much  on  the  side  of  harshness  and  cruelty  as  those 
of  the  Church  on  that  of  foolish  pity  towards  evil-doers." — F.  York  Powell. 

"  We  have  to  take  ourselves  back  to  a  state  of  society  in  which  a 
judicial  trial  was  a  tournament,  and  the  ordeal  an  approved  substitute 
for  evidence,  to  realise  what  civilsation  owes  to  the  Canon  Law  and  the 
canonists,  with  their  elaborate  system  of  written  law,  their  judicial 
evidence,  and  their  written  procedure."  —  Rashdall,  Universities  of 
Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages. 


-ii;o]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  41 

"  Ecclesiastical  privileges  were  not  so  exclusively 
priestly  privileges  as  we  sometimes  fancy.  They 
sheltered  not  only  ordained  ministers,  but  all  eccle- 
siastical officers  of  every  kind  ;  the  Church  Courts 
also  claimed  jurisdiction  in  the  causes  of  widows  and 
orphans.  In  short,  the  privileges  for  which  Thomas 
contended  transferred  a  large  part  of  the  people, 
and  that  the  most  helpless  part,  from  the  bloody 
grasp  of  the  King's  Courts  to  the  milder  jurisdiction 
of  the  bishop."  (Freeman,  Historical  Essays,  First 
Series.) 

Before  the  climax  of  the  dispute  between  Henry 
and  Thomas  was  reached  at  Clarendon,  the  arch- 
bishop had  resisted  the  king  in  a  matter  of  arbitrary 
taxation — "the  earliest  recorded  instance  of  resist- 
ance to  the  royal  will  in  a  matter  of  taxation  >J1 — 
and  had  fallen  still  further  in  the  king's  disfavour. 

Henry  was  at  Woodstock,  on  July  ist,  1163,  with 
the  archbishop  and  the  great  men  of  the  land,  and 
among  other  matters  a  question  was  raised  concern- 
ing the  payment  of  a  two  shillings  land  tax  on 
every  hide  of  land.  This  was  an  old  tax  dating 
from  Saxon  times,  which  William  the  Conqueror 
had  increased.  It  was  paid  to  the  sheriffs,  who  in 
return  undertook  the  defence  of  the  county,  and 
may  be  compared  with  the  county  rates  of  our  own 
day.  The  king  declared  this  tax  should  in  future  be 
collected  for  the  crown,  and  added  to  the  royal 
revenue  ;  and  no  one  dared  to  question  this  decision 
until  Archbishop  Thomas  arose  and  told  the  king  to 
his  face  that  the  tax  was  not  to  be  exacted  as 
revenue,  but  was  a  voluntary  offering  to  be  paid  to 
the  sheriffs  only  "  so  long  as  they  shall  serve  us 

1  W.  H.  Hutton. 


42  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

fitly  and  maintain  and  defend  our  dependants."  It 
was  not  a  tax  that  could  be  enforced  by  law. 

Henry,  bursting  with  anger,  swore,  "  By  God's 
Eyes  "  it  should  be  given  as  revenue,  and  enscrolled 
as  a  king's  tax. 

The  archbishop  replied  with  quiet  determination, 
"  aware  lest  by  his  sufferance  a  custom  should  come 
in  to  the  hurt  of  his  successors,"  that,  "  by  the 
reverence  of  those  Eyes,"  by  which  the  king  had 
sworn,  not  one  penny  should  be  paid  from  his  lands, 
or  from  the  rights  of  the  Church.  The  king  was 
silenced,  no  answer  was  forthcoming  to  the  objector, 
and  the  tax  was  paid  as  before  to  the  sheriffs.  But 
"  the  indignation  of  the  king  was  not  set  at  rest," 
and  in  October  came  the  Council  of  Westminster. 

The  king  at  once  demanded  that  criminous  clerks 
should  not  only  be  punished  in  the  Church  Courts 
by  the  sentence  of  deprivation,  but  should  further 
be  handed  over  to  the  King's  Courts  for  greater 
penalties,  alleging  that  those  who  were  not  re- 
strained from  crime  by  the  remembrance  of  their 
holy  orders  would  care  little  for  the  loss  of  such 
orders. 

The  archbishop  replied  quietly  that  this  proposed 
new  discipline  was  contrary  to  the  religious  liberty  of 
the  land,  and  that  he  would  never  agree  to  it.  The 
Church  was  the  one  sanctuary  against  the  barbarities 
of  the  law,  and  Thomas  to  the  end  would  maintain 
the  security  it  offered.  More  important  it  seemed  to 
him  that  clerical  offenders  should  escape  the  king's 
justice,  than  that  all  petty  felons  who  could  claim 
the  protection  of  the  Church  should  be  given  over 
to  mutilation  by  the  king's  officers.  The  bishops 
silently  supported  the  primate  in  this  matter,  though 


-1170]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  43 

they  told  him  plainly,  "  Better  the  liberties  of  the 
Church  perish  than  that  we  perish  ourselves.  Much 
must  be  yielded  to  the  malice  of  the  times." 

Thomas  answered  this  pitiful  plea  by  admitting 
the  times  were  bad.  "  But,"  he  added,  "  are  we  to 
heap  sin  upon  sin  ?  It  is  when  the  Church  is  in 
trouble,  and  not  merely  when  the  times  are  peaceful, 
that  a  bishop  must  cleave  to  the  right.  No  greater 
merit  was  there  to  the  bishops  of  old  who  gave  their 
blood  for  the  Church  than  there  is  now  to  those  who 
die  in  defence  of  her  liberties." 

But  the  bishops  were  wavering,  fearful  of  defying 
the  king's  will.  And  when  Henry,  defeated  for  the 
moment  by  the  archbishop's  stand,  angrily  called 
upon  them  to  take  an  oath  to  observe  in  future 
"  the  royal  customs  "  of  the  realm  as  settled  by  his 
grandfather,  Henry  I.,  they  all  agreed  to  do  so, 
adding  the  clause  "saving  the  rights  of  their  order." 
The  king  objected,  calling  for  the  promise  to  be 
made  "absolutely  and  without  qualifications,"  until 
Thomas  reminded  him  that  the  fealty  the  bishops 
swore  to  give  the  crown  "  in  life  and  limb  and 
earthly  honour"  was  sworn  "salvo  ordine  suo,"  and 
that  the  "  earthly  honour  "  promise,  which  included 
all  the  royal  "  customs"  of  Henry  I.,  was  not  to  be 
given  by  bishops  in  any  other  way. 

It  was  now  late  at  night,  and  the  king  broke  up 
the  council  in  anger,  leaving  the  bishops  to  retire  as 
they  would. 

Henry  was  resolved  to  abolish  the  Church  Courts 
and  destroy  the  protection  they  afforded.  He  would 
have  all  brought  under  the  seventy  of  his  law,  in 
spite  of  the  archbishop.  He  knew  the  bishops  were 
wavering  and  were  fearful  of  the  royal  displeasure. 


44  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

Thomas  Becket,  and  Thomas  Becket  alone,  was  the 
obstruction  to  the  king's  schemes,  and  firm  as  Becket 
might  stand,  the  king  would  break  down  his  opposition. 

The  very  day  after  Westminster  the  king  de- 
manded the  resignation  of  all  the  fortresses  and 
honours  Thomas  had  held  under  the  crown  since 
he  had  been  made  chancellor,  and  these  were 
surrendered  at  once. 

Then  Henry  tried  a  personal  appeal,  and  once 
more  the  two  met  together  in  a  field  near  North- 
ampton. Henry  began  by  reminding  Thomas  of 
all  he  had  done  for  him. 

"  Have  I  not  raised  you  from  a  mean  and  lowly 
state  to  height  of  honour  and  dignity  ?  How  is  it 
after  so  many  benefits  and  so  many  proofs  of  my 
affection,  which  all  have  seen,  you  have  forgotten 
these  things,  and  are  now  not  only  ungrateful,  but 
my  opponent  in  everything  ?  " 

The  archbishop  answered  :  "  Far  be  it  from  me, 
my  lord.  I  am  not  forgetful  of  the  favours  which 
God  has  conferred  upon  me  at  your  hands.  Far  be 
it  from  me  to  be  so  ungrateful  as  to  resist  your  will 
in  anything  so  long  as  it  is  in  accord  with  God's 
will."  St.  Thomas,  enlarging  on  the  necessity  of 
obedience  to  God  rather  than  to  men,  should  the 
will  of  man  clash  with  the  will  of  God,  the  king  at 
last  interrupted  him  impatiently  with  the  intimation 
that  he  did  not  want  a  sermon  just  then. 

"  Are  you  not  my  man,  the  son  of  one  of  my 
servants  ?  " 

"In  truth,"  the  archbishop  answered,  "  I  am  not 
sprung  from  a  race  of  kings.  Neither  was  blessed 
Peter,  the  prince  of  the  apostles,  to  whom  was  com- 
mitted the  leadership  of  the  Church." 


45 

"  And  in  truth  Peter  died  for  his  Lord,"  said  the 
king. 

"  I  too  will  die  for  my  Lord  when  the  time  comes," 
replied  the  archbishop. 

"  You  trust  too  much  to  the  ladder  you  have 
mounted  by,"  said  the  king. 

But  the  archbishop  answered  :  "I  trust  in  God, 
for  cursed  is  the  man  that  putteth  his  trust  in  man." 
Then  the  archbishop  went  on  to  remind  Henry  of 
the  proofs  he  had  given  of  his  fidelity  in  the  years 
when  he  was  chancellor,  and  warned  him  that  he 
would  have  done  well  to  have  taken  counsel  with  his 
archbishop  concerning  spiritual  things  than  with 
those  who  had  kindled  the  flame  of  envy  and  ven- 
geance against  one  who  had  done  them  no  wrong. 

The  only  reply  the  king  gave  was  to  urge  that 
the  Archbishop  should  drop  the  words  "  saving 
their  order  "  in  promising  to  obey  the  royal  customs. 

The  archbishop  refused  to  yield,  and  so  they 
parted.1 

At  the  close  of  the  year  the  archbishop's  diffi- 
culties had  been  increased  by  appeals  on  all  sides  to 
yield  to  the  king.  The  bishops  were  for  peace  at 
any  price,  and  the  Pope,  Alexander  III.,  threatened 
by  an  anti-pope,  and  anxious  for  the  good  will  of  the 
king  of  England,  sent  an  abbot  to  Thomas  urging 
him  to  give  way,  on  the  ground  that  Henry  only 
wanted  a  formal  assent  to  the  "customs"  for  the 
sake  of  his  dignity,  and  had  no  intention  of  doing 
anything  harmful  to  the  Church. 

Under  these  circumstances  Thomas  decided  to 
yield.  He  went  to  the  king  at  Woodstock  and 

1  This  conversation  is  reported  by  Roger  of  Pontigny,  who  ministered 
to  St.  Thomas  when  the  latter  was  in  exile  at  that  place. 


46  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

declared  that  the  obnoxious  phrase,  "  saving  our 
order,"  should  be  omitted  from  the  promise  to  observe 
the  "  customs." 

Without  delay  the  king  ordered  his  justiciar, 
Richard  of  Lucy,  and  his  clerk,  Jocelin  of  Balliol,  to 
draw  up  a  list  of  the  old  "  customs  "  and  liberties  of 
his  grandfather  Henry  I.,  and  on  the  29th  of  January, 
1 1 64,  a  great  council  was  held  at  Clarendon  to  ratify 
the  agreement  between  the  bishops  and  the  king. 

Sixteen  constitutions  or  articles  were  drawn  up, 
and  Thomas,  over-persuaded  by  the  prayers  of  the 
bishops  and  the  desire  for  peace,  gave  his  promise 
unconditionally  to  observe  them.  But  no  sooner 
had  he  done  so,  and  the  articles  were  placed  before 
him  in  black  and  white,  than  he  repented. 

The  very  first  article  declared  that  all  disputes 
about  Church  patronage  were  to  be  tried  in  the 
King's  Court,  and  was  intolerable,  because  while  the 
State  held  it  was  a  question  of  the  rights  of  property, 
the  Church  view  was  that  the  main  point  was  the 
care  of  souls,  a  spiritual  matter  for  churchmen,  not 
lawyers,  to  decide. 

The  other  articles  which  Thomas  objected  to,  and 
which  the  pope  subsequently  refused  to  ratify,  de- 
creed :  (i)  That  clerks  were  to  be  tried  in  the  King's 
Courts  for  offences  of  common  law.  (2)  That  neither 
archbishops,  bishops,  nor  beneficed  clerks  were  to 
leave  the  kingdom  without  the  king's  license.  (This, 
said  St.  Thomas,  would  stop  all  pilgrimages  and 
attendance  at  councils  at  Rome,  and  turn  England 
into  a  vast  prison.  "It  was  right  enough  to  apply 
for  the  king's  leave  before  the  departure,  but  to  bind 
one's-self  by  an  oath  not  to  go  without  it  was  against 
religion  and  was  evil.")  (3)  That  no  member  of  the 


-u7o]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  47 

king's  household  was  to  be  excommunicated  without 
the  king's  permission.  (4)  That  no  appeals  should 
be  taken  beyond  the  archbishop's  court,  except  to  be 
brought  before  the  king.  (This  was  a  definite 
attempt  to  prohibit  appeals  to  Rome,  and  Thomas 
pointed  out  that  the  archbishop  on  receiving  the 
pallium  swore  expressly  not  to  hinder  such  appeals. 
The  acceptance  of  this  article  left  the  king  absolute 
master.) 

The  last  article,  declaring  that  serfs  or  sons  of 
villeins  were  not  to  be  ordained  without  the  consent 
of  the  lord  on  whose  land  they  were  born,  was  not 
opposed  by  the  pope,  and  the  only  contemporary 
objection  seems  to  have  been  raised  by  Gamier,  a 
French  monk  and  a  biographer  of  Thomas  Becket.1 

Thomas  had  promised  obedience  to  these  consti- 
tutions, but  he  would  not  put  his  seal  to  them.  It 
seemed  to  him  that  it  was  not  only  the  old  "  cus- 
toms "  that  had  been  drawn  up,  but  rather  a  new 
interpretation  of  these  customs.  The  great  Council 
of  Clarendon  was  over.  Thomas  received  a  copy  of 
the  constitutions  and  rode  off,  and  the  king  had  to 
be  content  for  the  time  with  the  promises  delivered.. 

In  abject  remorse  Thomas  wrote  to  the  pope 
confessing  his  assent  to  the  Constitutions  of  Claren- 
don, and  for  forty  days  he  abstained  from  celebrating 
the  mass.  The  pope,  still  anxious  to  prevent  any 
open  rupture  between  the  king  and  the  archbishop, 
wrote  in  reply  that  "  Almighty  God  watches  not  the 
deed,  but  considers  rather  the  intention  and  judges 
the  will,"  and  that  Thomas  was  absolved  by  apostolic 

1  Gamier  was  a  poet,  and  he  protests  passionately  against  this  law, 
maintaining  that  God  has  called  us  all  to  His  service.  Much  more 
worth  is  the  villein's  son  who  is  honourable  than  a  nobleman's  son  who 
is  false. 


48  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

authority.  All  the  same,  Pope  Alexander  III.,  with- 
out in  any  way  censuring  Thomas,  throughout  the 
long  struggle  with  Henry  never  stands  up  roundly 
for  the  archbishop. 

Neither  Henry  nor  Thomas  could  rest  satisfied 
with  Clarendon.  The  archbishop  had  compromised 
for  the  sake  of  peace,  but  his  quick  revulsion  had 
provoked  a  keener  hostility  in  the  king.  To  Henry 
it  seemed  the  time  had  come  to  drive  Thomas  out 
of  public  life  by  compelling  him  to  resign  the  see 
of  Canterbury.  With  Thomas  out  of  the  way 
Henry  could  carry  out  his  plans  for  a  strong 
central  government,  for  bringing  all  under  the 
pitiless  arm  of  the  law.  Thomas  was  the  one 
man  in  the  kingdom  who  dared  offer  resistance, 
and  if  Thomas  was  no  longer  archbishop  and  some 
supple  creature  of  the  king  was  in  his  place,  the 
royal  power  would  be  absolute,  for  there  seemed 
no  fear  of  any  interference  from  Pope  Alexander  III. 

There  were  plenty  of  the  archbishop's  enemies 
among  the  nobles  at  the  court  ready  to  fan  the 
king's  anger  against  Thomas,  and  by  October,  1 164, 
Henry  was  ready  to  crush  the  primate. 

Another  council  was  summoned  to  meet  at 
Northampton,  and  now  Archbishop  Thomas  was 
to  learn  the  full  significance  of  the  Constitutions 
of  Clarendon. 

The  first  charge  against  Thomas  was  that  he  had 
refused  justice  to  John,  the  Treasurer-Marshal,  who 
had  taken  up  some  land  under  the  see  of  Canter- 
bury. John  had  taken  his  suit  to  the  King's  Court, 
and  Thomas  was  further  charged  with  contempt  of 
the  majesty  of  the  crown  for  not  putting  in  a 
personal  appearance  at  this  court.  The  king  now 


-n7o]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  49 

pressed  for  judgment  against  the  archbishop  for 
this  contempt,  and  the  council  ordered  that  he 
should  be  condemned  to  the  loss  of  all  his  moveable 
property,  and  500  pounds  of  silver  was  accepted  as 
an  equivalent  fine. 

"It  seemed  to  all  that,  considering  the  reverence 
due  to  the  king  and  by  the  obligation  of  the  oath  of 
homage,  which  the  archbishop  had  taken,  and  by 
the  fealty  to  the  king's  earthly  honour  which  he  had 
sworn,  he  was  in  no  way  to  be  excused,  because 
when  summoned  by  the  king  he  had  neither  come 
himself,  nor  pleaded  infirmity,  or  the  necessary 
work  of  his  ecclesiastical  office."  (W.  FitzStephen). 

It  was  not  easy  to  get  the  sentence  pronounced 
against  Thomas.  Barons  and  bishops  were  willing 
enough  to  stand  well  with  the  king,  and  they  agreed 
without  contradiction  to  the  fine.  But  the  barons 
declined  to  act  as  judge  on  a  spiritual  peer,  and 
insisted  that  one  of  the  bishops  must  do  this 
business.  Henry,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  at  last, 
on  the  king's  order,  pronounced  the  sentence. 

Thomas  protested.  "  If  I  were  silent  at  such  a 
sentence  posterity  would  not  be.  This  is  a  new 
form  of  sentence,  no  doubt  in  accordance  with  the 
new  laws  of  Clarendon.  Never  has  it  been  heard 
before  in  England  that  an  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
has  been  tried  in  the  King's  Court  for  such  a  cause. 
The  dignity  of  the  Church,  the  authority  of  his 
person,  the  fact  that  he  is  the  spiritual  father  of 
the  king  and  of  all  his  subjects,  require  that  he 
should  be  reverenced  by  all."  For  an  archbishop 
to  be  judged  by  his  suffragans  was,  he  declared, 
for  a  father  to  be  judged  by  his  sons. 

The  bishops  implored  him  to  bow  to  the  decree 


50  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

of  the  council,  and  Thomas  yielded,  "  not  being 
willing  that  a  mere  matter  of  money  should  cause 
strife  between  the  king  and  himself." 

The  next  day,  Friday,  October  9th,  the  king 
pressed  Thomas  more  fiercely,  calling  upon  him 
to  give  account  for  large  sums  spent  during  his 
chancellorship,  and  for  various  revenues  of  vacant 
churches  during  that  period.  The  total  amount 
was  30,000  marks. 

In  vain  the  archbishop  urged  that  this  demand 
was  totally  unexpected  ;  that  he  had  not  been 
summoned  to  Northampton  to  render  such  an 
account ;  and  that  the  justiciar,  Richard,  had 
declared  that  he  was  free  of  all  claims  when  he 
laid  down  the  chancellorship.  The  king  demanded 
sureties,  "and  from  that  day  barons  and  knights 
kept  away  from  the  archbishop's  house — for  they 
understood  the  mind  of  the  king." 

All  Saturday  Thomas  was  in  consultation  with 
the  bishops,  most  of  whom  expressed  themselves 
strongly  on  the  king's  side.  Henry  of  Winchester 
suggested  the  present  of  2,000  marks  to  the  king  as 
a  peace-offering,  and  this  was  done.  But  the  king 
would  not  have  it.  Hilary,  of  Chichester,  said, 
addressing  the  archbishop,  "You  ought  to  know 
the  king  better  than  we  do,  for  you  lived  with  him 
in  close  companionship  and  friendship  when  you 
were  chancellor.  Who  is  there  who  could  be  your 
surety  for  all  this  money  ?  The  king  has  declared, 
so  it  is  said,  that  he  and  you  cannot  both  remain 
in  England  as  king  and  archbishop.  It  would  be 
much  safer  to  resign  everything  and  submit  to  his 
mercy.  God  forbid  lest  he  arrest  you  over  these 
moneys  of  the  chancellorship,  or  lay  hands  on  you." 


-1170]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  51 

One  or  two  less  craven  urged  the  archbishop  to 
stand  firm,  as  his  predecessors  had  done,  in  the 
face  of  persecution. 

"Oh,  that  you  were  no  longer  archbishop  and 
were  only  Thomas,"  said  Hilary,  putting  the  matter 
briefly. 

All  Sunday  was  spent  in  consultations.  On 
Monday  the  archbishop  was  too  ill  to  attend  the 
council,  but  on  Tuesday  his  mind  was  made  up, 
and  when  he  entered  the  council  it  was  with  the 
full  dignity  of  an  archbishop,  carrying  the  cross  of 
the  archbishop  in  his  hand. 

The  bishops  were  in  despair.  There  were  all 
sorts  of  rumours  in  the  air.  It  was  known  the  king 
was  full  of  anger,  and  it  was  said  that  the  arch- 
bishop's life  was  in  danger.  The  bishops  implored 
him  to  resign,  or  else  to  promise  complete  submission 
to  the  councils  of  Clarendon.  They  said  he  would 
certainly  be  tried  and  condemned  for  high  treason 
for  disobedience  to  the  king,  and  asked  him  what 
was  the  use  of  being  archbishop  when  he  had  the 
king's  hatred. 

Gilbert  Foliot,  Bishop  of  London,  declared  con- 
temptuously of  Thomas,  when  someone  asked  him 
why  he  did  not  carry  the  archbishop's  cross  for  him, 
"He  always  was  a  fool,  and  always  will  be." 

Thomas  had  now  only  one  answer  to  the  bishops. 
He  forbad  them  to  take  any  part  in  the  proceedings 
against  him,  announced  that  he  had  appealed  to 
"  our  Mother,  the  Church  of  Rome,  refuge  of  all 
the  oppressed,"  to  prevent  any  of  them  taking  part, 
and  ordered  them  to  excommunicate  any  who  should 
dare  lay  secular  hands  upon  the  primate. 

Then,  holding  his  cross,  the  archbishop  took  his 


52  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

usual  place  in  the  council-chamber,  while  the  king 
sat  in  an  inner  room. 

In  the  face  of  personal  danger  all  the  strength 
and  courage  of  Thomas  Becket  were  aroused.  He 
had  yielded  at  Clarendon  for  the  sake  of  peace,  and 
no  good  had  come  of  it.  He  had  submitted  to  be 
fined  rather  than  be  involved  in  a  miserable  dispute 
about  money,  and  now  he  was  threatened  with 
demands  for  money  which  were  beyond  his  resources. 
There  was  nothing  to  prevent  the  king  piling  up 
greater  and  greater  sums  against  him,  till  hopeless 
ruin  had  been  reached.  He  was  powerless  to  with- 
stand such  an  onslaught.  To  Rome,  "the  refuge  of 
all  the  oppressed,"  would  Thomas  appeal,  and  then, 
if  it  seemed  well  to  the  pope,  he  would  retire  from 
Canterbury.  But  he  would  not  surrender  his  post, 
however  great  the  wrath  of  the  king,  unless  it  were 
for  the  welfare  of  the  Christian  Church. 

In  the  council-chamber  Thomas  sat  alone,  with 
one  or  two  clergy  attending  him,  including  Herbert 
of  Bosham  and  William  FitzStephen,  while  the 
bishops  went  in  to  the  king's  chamber.  Among 
the  nobles  the  cry  was  going  up  that  the  archbishop 
was  a  perjurer  and  a  traitor,  because,  after  signing 
at  Clarendon,  he  now,  in  violation  of  those  con- 
stitutions, forbad  bishops  to  give  judgment  in  a  case 
that  did  not  involve  bloodshed,  and  had  further 
made  appeal  to  Rome. 

Then  the  king  sent  to  know  whether  the  arch- 
bishop refused  to  be  bound  by  the  Constitutions  of 
Clarendon,  and  whether  he  would  find  sureties  to 
abide  by  the  sentence  of  the  court  regarding  the 
accounts  of  his  chancellorship. 

Thomas  again  pointed  out  that  he  had  not  been 


-i  1 70]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  53 

called  there  to  give  an  account  of  his  chancellorship, 
that  on  his  appointment  to  the  archbishopric  he  had 
been  declared  by  the  king  free  of  all  secular  claims, 
and  that  he  had  forbidden  the  bishops  to  take  part 
in  any  judgment  against  him,  and  had  appealed  to 
Rome,  "  placing  his  person  and  the  church  of 
Canterbury  under  the  protection  of  God  and  the 
pope." 

At  the  end  of  this  speech  the  barons  returned  in 
silence  to  the  king,  pondering  the  archbishop's 
words. 

But  hostile  murmuring  soon  broke  the  silence, 
and  Thomas  could  overhear  the  barons  grumbling 
that,  "  King  William,  who  conquered  England, 
knew  how  to  tame  his  clerks.  He  had  put  his  own 
brother  Odo  in  prison,  and  thrown  Stigand,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  into  a  dungeon." 

The  bishops  renewed  their  pitiful  chorus.  Thomas 
had  placed  them  between  the  hammer  and  the  anvil 
by  his  prohibition  :  of  disobedience  to  Canterbury 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  king's  anger  on  the 
other.  They  had  given  their  word  at  Clarendon, 
and  now  they  were  being  forced  to  go  against  the 
promises  they  had  made.  They,  too,  would  appeal 
to  Rome  against  his  prohibition,  "  lest  you  injure  us 
still  more." 

All  that  Thomas  could  say  was  that  the  Constitu- 
tions of  Clarendon  had  been  sent  to  the  pope  for 
confirmation,  and  had  been  returned,  rather  con- 
demned than  approved.  "  This  example  has  been 
given  for  our  learning,  that  we  should  do  likewise, 
and  be  ready  to  receive  what  he  receives  at  Rome, 
and  reject  what  he  rejects.  If  we  fell  at  Clarendon, 
through  weakness  of  the  flesh,  the  more  ought  we 


54  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

to  take  courage  now,  and  in  the  might  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  contend  against  the  old  enemy  of  man."1 

So  bishops  and  nobles  came  and  went  between 
the  king  and  the  archbishop,  and  the  day  drew  on. 
Henry  allowed  the  bishops  to  stand  apart  from  the 
judgment,  and  demanded  sentence  from  the  barons, 
and  Earl  Robert  of  Leicester  advanced  as  the 
spokesman  of  the  council  to  where  the  archbishop 
was  sitting.  The  earl  began  to  speak  of  the  judg- 
ment of  the  court,  when  Thomas  rose  and  refused  to 
hear  him. 

"  What  is  this  you  would  do  ?  "  he  cried.  "  Would 
you  pass  sentence  on  me  ?  Neither  law  nor  reason 
permit  children  to  pass  sentence  on  their  father. 
You  are  nobles  of  the  palace,  and  I  am  your  spiritual 
father.  I  will  not  hear  this  sentence  of  the  king,  or 
any  judgment  of  yours.  For,  under  God,  I  will  be 
judged  by  the  pope  alone,  to  whom  before  you  all 
here  I  appeal,  placing  the  church  of  Canterbury 
with  all  thereto  belonging  under  God's  protection 
and  the  protection  of  the  pope."  Then  he  turned 
to  the  bishops.  "  And  you,  my  brethren,  who  have 
served  man  rather  than  God,  I  summon  to  the 
presence  of  the  pope  ;  and  now,  guarded  by  the 
authority  of  the  Catholic  Church  and  the  Holy  See, 
I  go  hence." 

So  he  passed  out  of  the  hall,  no  one  gainsaying 
his  passage,  though  some  plucked  rushes  from  the 
floor  and  threw  at  him.  There  were  shouts  of 
anger,  and  again  the  cries  of  "  traitor  "  and  "  per- 
jurer "  were  raised.  The  archbishop  turned  on  Earl 
Hamelin,  the  king's  brother,  and  Randulf  of  Brok, 
who  were  calling  "  traitor,"  and  said  sternly  :  "  If  I 

1  W.  FitzStephen. 


-ii;o]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  55 

were  not  a  priest,  my  own  arms  should  quickly 
prove  your  lie.  And  you,  Randulf,  look  at  home 
(his  cousin  had  lately  been  hanged  for  felony)  before 
you  accuse  the  guiltless !  " 

His  horses  were  at  the  gate,  and  a  great  crowd 
that  were  afraid  lest  the  archbishop  had  been  killed. 
St.  Thomas  mounted,  and  accompanied  by  Herbert 
of  Bosham,  rode  back  to  the  monastery  of  St. 
Andrew,  where  he  had  been  lodging.  The  crowd 
thronged  him  and  prayed  for  his  blessing  all  the 
way  until  the  monastery  was  reached,  and  then  he 
would  have  the  multitude  come  in  to  the  refectory 
and  dine  with  him.  Of  his  own  retinue  of  forty 
who  had  come  with  him  to  Northampton,  scarce  six 
remained  ;  and  so  the  places  of  those  who  had 
thought  it  safer  to  desert  their  lord  were  filled  by 
the  hungry  multitude.  It  was  the  archbishop's  fare- 
well banquet,  and  he,  the  constant  champion  of  the 
poor,  had  those  whom  he  loved  for  his  guests  that 
day. 

At  nightfall,  after  compline  had  been  sung  and  the 
monks  dispersed  to  their  cells,  the  archbishop,  with 
three  other  men  in  the  dress  of  lay  brothers,  rode 
out  from  Northampton  by  the  north  gate,  and  at 
dawn  were  at  Grantham.  Three  weeks  later 
Thomas  had  reached  Flanders,  and  the  exile  had 
begun  which  was  only  to  end  six  years  later  when 
death  was  at  hand. 

It  was  useless  to  remain  in  England,  hopeless  as 
Thomas  was  of  any  support  from  the  bishops.  He 
could  but  appeal,  as  Anselm  had  appealed,  to  the 
one  court  that  alone  was  recognised  as  owning  a 
higher  authority  than  that  of  the  kings  of  this  world, 
the  court  of  Rome. 


56  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

But  Pope  Alexander,  still  harassed  by  an  anti-pope 
set  up  by  the  Emperor  Frederick,  could  do  as  little 
for  Thomas  as  his  predecessor  had  done  for  Anselm, 
though  he  refused  to  allow  him  to  resign  the 
archbishopric.  Unlike  Anselm,  Thomas  vigorously 
carried  on  his  contest  with  the  king  from  the 
friendly  shelter  of  King  Louis  of  France,  and 
Henry  retaliated  without  hesitation,  driving  out  of 
England  all  the  friends  and  kinsmen  of  Thomas,  to 
the  number  of  four  hundred,  and  threatening  a  like 
banishment  to  the  Cistercian  monks,  because 
Thomas  had  taken  refuge  in  their  monastery  at 
Pontigny. 

The  fear  that  the  pope  would  allow  the  archbishop 
to  pronounce  an  interdict  against  England,  and  a 
sentence  of  personal  excommunication  against  its 
king,  drove  Henry  in  1166  to  appeal  himself  to  the 
pope.  "  Thus  by  a  strange  fate  it  happened  that 
the  king,  while  striving  for  those  'ancient  customs,' 
by  which  he  endeavoured  to  prevent  any  right  of 
appeal  (to  the  pope),  was  doomed  to  confirm  the 
right  of  appeal  for  his  own  safety."  (John  of 
Salisbury.) 

Months  and  years  passed  in  correspondence. 
More  than  once  Henry  and  Thomas  met  at  the 
court  of  Louis,  but  neither  would  yield.  The 
pope,  without  blaming  the  archbishop,  and  without 
sanctioning  any  extreme  step  against  Henry,  did 
what  he  could  to  make  peace  between  them. 

At  last,  in  the  summer  of  1 1 70,  the  king  really 
was  disturbed  by  the  fear  of  an  interdict,  for  his  last 
act  against  Archbishop  Thomas  had  been  to  have  his 
son  crowned  by  the  Archbishop  of  York,  in  defiance 
of  all  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  see  of  Canter- 


-1170]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  57 

bury.  Besides  this,  Louis  was  threatening  war 
because  his  daughter,  who  was  married  to  the  young 
King  Henry,  had  not  been  crowned  with  her 
husband.  Henry  hastened  over  to  France  and 
made  friends  with  Thomas,  and  the  reconciliation 
took  place  at  Freteral.  The  king  solemnly  promised 
that  the  archbishop  should  enjoy  all  the  possessions 
and  rights  of  which  he  had  been  deprived  in  his 
exile,  and  that  his  friends  and  kinsmen  should  all  be 
allowed  to  return  home.  He  even  apologised  for 
the  coronation  of  his  son.  It  seemed  as  if  the  old 
friendship  had  been  revived.  "  We  conversed 
together  until  the  evening  as  familiarly  as  in  the 
days  of  our  ancient  friendship.  And  it  was  agreed 
I  should  arrange  my  affairs  and  then  make  some 
stay  with  the  king  before  embarking  for  England  ; 
that  the  world  might  know  how  thoroughly  we  are 
restored  to  his  favour  and  intimacy.  We  are  not 
afraid  that  the  king  will  not  fulfil  his  promises, 
unless  he  is  misled  by  evil  counsellors."  So  Thomas 
wrote  to  the  pope  in  July,  1170.  Yet  there  were 
many — including  King  Louis — who  doubted  the 
sincerity  of  the  reconciliation,  for  Henry  was  not 
willing  to  give  the  kiss  of  peace  to  his  archbishop. 

On  December  ist  Thomas  landed  at  Sandwich, 
and  went  at  once  to  Canterbury.  The  townspeople 
and  the  poor  of  the  land  welcomed  him  with  enthu- 
siastic devotion.  "  Small  and  great,  old  and  young, 
ran  together,  some  throwing  themselves  in  his  way, 
others  crying  and  exclaiming,  '  Blessed  is  he  that 
cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord.'  In  the  same 
manner  the  clergy  and  their  parishioners  met  him  in 
procession,  saluting  their  father  and  begging  his 
blessing.  .  .  .  And  when  all  things  in  the 


58  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

cathedral  was  solemnly  ended,  the  archbishop  went 
to  his  palace,  and  so  ended  that  joyful  and  solemn 
day."  (Herbert  of  Bosham.) 

But  against  the  affection  and  goodwill  of  his  own 
people  at  Canterbury,  and  a  similar  demonstration  of 
rejoicing  by  multitudes  of  clergy  and  people  in 
London,  Thomas  had  to  face  the  fact  that  the 
bishops  generally  hated  his  return,  that  the  young 
Prince  Henry,  recently  crowned,  who  had  been  his 
pupil,  refused  to  see  him  and  ordered  his  return  to 
Canterbury,  and  that  the  nobles  openly  spoke  of 
him  as  a  traitor  to  the  king.  "  This  is  a  peace  for 
us  which  is  no  peace,  but  rather  war,"  said  the 
archbishop  bitterly. 

The  end  was  not  far  off.  Thomas,  as  zealous  for 
good  discipline  in  the  Church  as  Henry  was  for 
strong  authority  in  the  State,  was  no  sooner  returned 
than  he  was  asked  to  withdraw  the  sentence  of 
excommunication  against  the  Archbishop  of  York 
and  the  Bishops  of  London  and  Salisbury.  He 
promised  to  do  this  if  the  bishops  on  their  part 
would  promise  to  submit  to  the  decision  of  the  pope 
on  the  matter.  London  and  Salisbury  were  moved 
to  receive  absolution  on  these  terms,  but  Roger,  of 
York,  who  had  always  been  against  Becket,  dis- 
suaded them,  urging  them  to  throw  themselves  on 
the  protection  of  the  king,  and  threatening  Thomas 
"  with  marvellous  and  terrible  things  at  the  hands  of 
the  king "  unless  he  relented.  Naturally,  these 
threats  left  the  archbishop  undisturbed,  and  Roger 
of  York,  with  Gilbert  Foliot  of  London  and  Jocelin 
of  Salisbury,  at  once  hastened  over  to  France  to  lay 
their  case  before  the  king. 

These    bishops    were    not    the    only    men    who 


Thomas  of  Canterbury  59 

troubled  Thomas  in  these  last  days.  Randulf  de 
Broc,  with  others  of  his  family,  and  certain 
knights,  all  known  as  strong  "king's  men,"  "sought 
every  means  to  entangle  him  in  a  quarrel,"  and  did 
not  stop  from  robbing  a  ship  belonging  to  the  arch- 
bishop and  from  seizing  a  number  of  horses,  and 
mutilating  one  of  them.  Thomas  replied  by  ex- 
communicating Randulf  and  Robert  de  Broc,  the 
boldest  of  these  offenders. 

At  Christmas  more  than  one  of  the  archbishop's 
followers  warned  him  that  his  life  was  in  danger, 
and  Thomas  seems  to  have  realised  that  his  position 
was  hazardous.  But  he  would  not  fly. 

Already  his  murderers  were  at  hand. 

The  excommunicated  bishops  had  reached  the 
king  at  Bur,  near  Bayeux,  had  told  their  story,  and 
had  coloured  it  with  a  fanciful  description  of  Thomas 
making  a  circuit  of  England  at  the  head  of  a  large 
body  of  men.1  Someone  had  said,  "  My  lord,  as 
long  as  Thomas  lives,  you  will  have  neither  peace 
nor  quiet  in  your  kingdom,  nor  will  you  ever  see 
good  days  ; "  and  at  this  Henry  had  burst  out  into  a 
terrible  rage  of  bitterness  and  passion,  for  such  fits 
at  times  took  possession  of  him.  "  Here  is  a  man," 
he  cried  out,  "  who  came  to  my  court  a  sorry  clerk, 
who  owes  all  he  has  to  me,  and  insults  my  kingdom 
and  lifts  his  heel  against  me.  And  not  one  of  the 
cowardly  sluggish  knaves,  whom  I  feed  and  pay  so 

well,  but  surfers  this,  nor  has  the  heart  to  avenge 

i  " 
me ! 

The  words  were  spoken,  and  four  of  the  king's 
knights — Reginald  FitzUrse,  William  of  Tracy, 
Hugh  of  Morville,  and  Richard  the  Breton— hearing 

1  W.  FitzStephen. 


60  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

what  was  said,  and  that  Roger  of  York  had  declared 
"as  soon  as  Thomas  is  dead  all  this  trouble  will  be 
ended,  and  not  before,"  at  once  departed.  They 
sailed  from  different  ports  and  met  together  at 
Saltwood,  the  castle  of  the  Brocs,  on  December  28th. 
The  following  day  they  rode  on  to  Canterbury, 
taking  with  them  twelve  of  Randulf's  men  and 
Hugh  of  Horsea,  who  was  called  the  Evil  Deacon. 

The  king,  on  finding  the  four  knights  had  left  the 
court,  gave  orders  to  have  them  stopped,  but  it  was 
too  late.  They  were  then  at  Canterbury,  and  enter- 
ing the  hospitable  doors  of  the  palace  had  made 
direct  for  the  archbishop's  private  chamber. 

It  was  four  o'clock.  Dinner  had  been  at  three, 
and  Thomas  was  sitting  on  his  bed  talking  to  John 
of  Salisbury,  Edward  Grim,  and  a  few  other  friends. 
When  the  knights  entered,  Thomas  recognized 
Reginald,  William,  and  Hugh,  for  they  had  served 
under  him  years  before,  and  waited  for  them  to 
speak. 

Reginald  FitzUrse  was  the  spokesman.  He 
declared  they  had  come  from  the  king,  that  Thomas 
must  take  an  oath  of  fealty  to  the  newly-crowned 
prince,  and  must  absolve  the  excommunicated 
bishops.  Thomas  answered  that  the  bishops  might 
have  been  absolved  on  their  willingness  to  obey  the 
judgments  of  the  Church,  and  that  the  king  had 
sanctioned  what  had  been  done  at  their  reconciliation. 

Reginald  denied  there  had  been  any  reconciliation, 
and  swore  that  Thomas  was  imputing  treachery  to 
the  king  in  saying  such  a  thing. 

The  archbishop  pointed  out  that  the  reconciliation 
had  taken  place  in  public,  and  that  Reginald  himself 
had  been  present. 


Thomas  of  Canterbury  61 

Reginald  swore  he  had  never  been  there,  and  had 
not  heard  of  it.  And  at  this  the  other  knights 
broke  in,  swearing  again  and  again,  by  God's 
wounds,  that  they  had  borne  with  him  far  too  long 
already. 

Then  Thomas  reminded  them  of  the  insults  and 
losses  he  had  endured,  especially  at  the  hands  of  the 
De  Brocs,  since  his  return. 

Hugh  of  Morville  answered  him  that  he  had  his 
remedy  in  the  King's  Courts,  and  ought  not  to  ex- 
communicate men  on  his  own  authority. 

"  I  shall  wait  for  no  man's  leave  to  do  justice  on 
any  that  wrong  the  Church  and  will  not  give  satis- 
faction," Thomas  replied. 

"  What  do  you  threaten  us !  Threats  are  too 
much  !  "  cried  Reginald  FitzUrse. 

Then  the  knights  bit  their  gloves  and  angrily 
defied  the  archbishop. 

Thomas  told  them  that  they  could  not  intimidate 
him.  "  Once  I  went  away  like  a  timid  priest ;  now 
I  have  returned,  and  I  will  never  leave  again.  If  I 
may  do  my  office  in  peace,  it  is  well :  if  I  may  not, 
God's  will  be  done."  Then  he  turned  to  remind 
them  they  had  once  sworn  fealty  to  him  when  he 
was  chancellor. 

"We  are  the  king's  men,"  they  shouted  out,  "and 
owe  fealty  to  no  one  against  the  king  !  " 

Bidding  his  servants  keep  the  archbishop  within 
the  precincts  on  peril  of  their  lives,  the  knights 
withdrew. 

"It  is  easy  to  keep  me,"  said  Thomas,  "for  I 
shall  not  go  away.  I  will  not  fly  for  the  king  or 
for  any  living  man." 

"  Why  did  you  not  take  counsel  with  us  and  give 


62  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

milder  answer  to  your  enemies?"  said  John  of 
Salisbury.  "  You  are  ready  to  die,  but  we  are  not. 
Think  of  our  peril !  " 

"We  must  all  die,"  the  archbishop  answered, 
"  and  the  fear  of  death  must  not  turn  us  from  doing 
justice." 

Word  was  quickly  brought  in  that  the  knights 
were  putting  on  their  armour  in  the  courtyard,  and 
the  monks,  frightened  at  the  sight  of  these  men  with 
drawn  swords  entering  the  orchard  to  the  west  of 
the  cathedral,  rushed  to  the  archbishop  and  implored 
him  to  fly  to  the  cathedral.  Thomas  smiled  at  their 
terror,  saying,  "  All  you  monks  are  too  cowardly,  it 
seems  to  me."  And  not  till  vespers  had  begun 
would  he  leave  for  the  minster.  The  knights  broke 
into  the  cloisters  after  him,  and  reaching  St.  Benet's 
chapel  began  to  hammer  at  the  door,  which  for  safety 
the  monks  had  barred  behind  them. 

Thomas  at  once  ordered  the  door  to  be  unbolted, 
saying,  "  God's  house  shall  not  be  made  a  fortress  on 
my  account."  He  slipped  back  the  iron  bar  himself, 
and  the  angry  knights  rushed  in  with  cries  of 
"  Where  is  the  traitor  ?  Where  is  the  archbishop  ?  " 

It  was  five  o'clock  and  a  dark  winter's  night.  Had 
Thomas  chosen,  he  could  easily  have  escaped  death 
by  concealing  himself  in  the  crypt  or  in  one  of  the 
many  hiding  places  in  the  cathedral.  But  he  felt  his 
hour  had  come  and  met  it  without  faltering.  John 
of  Salisbury  and  the  rest  of  the  monks  and  clerks 
vanished  away  and  hid  themselves,  leaving  only 
Edward  Grim,  Robert  of  Merton  and  William  Fitz- 
Stephen  with  the  archbishop.  Soon  only  Grim  was 
left,  when  the  archbishop  came  out  boldly,  and 
standing  by  a  great  pillar  near  the  altar  of  St.  Bene- 


Thomas  of  Canterbury  63 

diet,  answered  his  accusers.  "  Here  I  am :  no 
traitor,  Reginald,  but  your  archbishop." 

They  tried  to  drag  him  from  the  church,  but  he 
clung  to  the  great  pillar,  with  Edward  Grim  by  his 
side.  For  the  last  time  Reginald  called  on  him  to 
come  out  of  the  church.  "  I  am  ready  to  die,  but 
let  my  people  go,  and  do  not  hurt  them,"  was  the 
archbishop's  answer.  William  Tracy  seized  hold  of 
him,  but  Thomas  hurled  him  back.  Upon  that 
FitzUrse  shouted,  "Strike!  strike!"  And  Tracy 
cut  savagely  at  the  head  of  the  archbishop.  Grim 
sprang  forward  and  the  blow  fell  on  his  arm,  and  he 
fell  back  badly  wounded. 

Then  Thomas  commended  his  cause  and  that  of 
the  Church  to  St.  Denis  and  the  patron  saints  of  the 
cathedral,  and  his  soul  to  God,  and  without  flinching 
bowed  his  head  to  his  murderers.  FitzUrse,  Tracy 
and  Richard  the  Breton  struck  the  archbishop  down, 
and  Hugh  the  Evil  Deacon  mangled  in  brutal 
fashion  the  head  of  St.  Thomas  before  calling  out  to 
the  others :  "  Let  us  go  now ;  he  will  never  rise 
again  ! " 

Then  they  all  rushed  from  the  church,  and  shout- 
ing, "  King's  knights  !  King's  knights  !  "  proceeded 
to  plunder  the  palace.  They  fled  north  that 
night  to  the  castle  of  Hugh  of  Morville  at  Knares- 
borough,  where  for  a  time  they  lived  in  close 
retirement.  Tracy  subsequently  went  on  a  pil- 
grimage to  Rome  and  Palestine,  but  all  four  "within 
two  years  of  the  murder  were  living  at  court  on 
familiar  terms  with  the  king."1 

Henry  and  all  his  court  were  horrified  when  the 
news  was  brought  of  the  archbishop's  martyrdom, 

1  Dean  Stanley. 


64  Leaders  of  the  People         [1162- 

for  all  the  people  proclaimed  the  murdered  prelate  a 
saint  and  a  martyr,  and  "a  martyr  he  clearly  was, 
not  merely  to  the  privileges  of  the  Church  or  to  the 
rights  of  the  see  of  Canterbury,  but  to  the  general 
cause  of  law  and  order  as  opposed  to  violence."1 
Had  St.  Thomas  yielded  in  the  matter  of  the  ex- 
communicated bishops,  and  sought  favour  with  the 
king  at  the  expense  of  the  liberties  and  discipline  of 
the  Church,  and  had  he  given  way  to  the  savage, 
lawless  turbulence  of  the  king's  knights,  he  would 
not  only  have  escaped  a  violent  death,  but  might 
have  lived  long  in  the  sunshine  of  the  royal  pleasure. 
He  chose  the  rougher,  steeper  road,  daring  all  to 
save  the  Church  and  the  mass  of  the  English  people 
from  being  brought  under  the  iron  heel  of  a  king's 
absolute  rule,  and  he  paid  the  penalty,  pouring  out 
his  blood  on  the  stones  of  the  minster  at  Canterbury 
to  seal  the  vows  he  had  taken  when  he  first  entered 
the  city  as  archbishop. 

In  his  dying  St.  Thomas  was  even  stronger  than 
in  his  life.  Henry  hastened  to  beg  the  forgiveness 
of  Rome  for  his  rash  words  that  had  provoked  the 
murder,  and  in  the  presence  of  the  pope's  legates 
in  Normandy  promised  to  give  up  the  Constitutions 
of  Clarendon  and  to  stand  by  the  papacy  against  the 
emperor.  Nor  did  he  make  any  further  attempt  in 
his  reign  to  bring  the  Church  under  the  subjection 
of  the  crown,  but  built  up  a  great  system  of  legal 
administration,  which  in  substance  exists  to-day. 

St.  Thomas  was  canonised  four  years  after  his 
death.  "  There  was  no  shadow  of  doubt  in  men's 
minds  that  here  was  one  who  was  a  martyr  as  fully 
as  any  martyr  of  the  catacombs  and  the  Roman 

1  Freeman,  Historical  Essays.     First  series. 


-1170]         Thomas  of  Canterbury  65 

persecutions."  (R.  H.  Benson,  St.  Thomas  of  Can- 
terbury?) Countless  miracles  were  alleged  to  prove 
the  sanctity  of  the  dead  hero,  and  pilgrims  from  all 
parts  made  their  way  to  the  shrine  of  the  "  blessful 
martyr"  at  Canterbury.  Not  only  in  England,  but 
in  France  and  Flanders,  and  particularly  in  Ireland 
was  there  an  outburst  of  devotion  to  St.  Thomas. 

The  shrine  at  Canterbury  was  destroyed  by 
Henry  VIII.,  who  after  a  mock  trial  of  the  arch- 
bishop slain  more  than  300  years  earlier,  declared 
that  "  Thomas,  sometime  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
had  been  guilty  of  contumacy,  treason  and  rebellion," 
and  "  was  no  saint,  but  rather  a  rebel  and  traitor  to 
his  prince." 

But  though  Thomas,  canonised  by  the  pope  on 
the  prayers  of  the  people  of  England,  could  be  struck 
out  of  the  calendar  of  the  Church  of  England  by  the 
arbitrary  will  of  King  Henry  VIII.,  as  an  enemy  of 
princes,  and  his  shrine  destroyed,  it  is  beyond  the 
power  of  a  king  to  reverse  the  sentence  of  history  or 
to  blast  for  ever  the  fame  of  a  great  and  courageous 
champion  of  the  poor  of  this  land.  Time  makes 
little  of  the  insults  of  Henry  VIII.  Thomas  of 
Canterbury  died  for  the  religion  that  in  his  day  pro- 
tected the  people  against  the  despotism  of  the  crown. 
"  He  was  always  a  hater  of  liars  and  slanderers  and 
a  kind  friend  to  dumb  beasts  (hence  his  rage  with 
De  Broc  for  mutilating  a  horse)  and  all  poor  and 
helpless  folk."  (F.  York  Powell.) 

That  Henry  II.  strove  to  make  law  predominant 
in  the  spirit  of  a  great  statesman  is  as  true  as  that 
Thomas  strove  to  mitigate  the  harshness  of  the 
law.  As  a  writer  of  the  twelfth  century  put  it  : 
"  Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  both  strove 

6 


66  Leaders  of  the  People 

earnestly  to  do  the  will  of  God,  one  for  the  sake  of 
his  realm,  the  other  on  behalf  of  his  Church.  But 
whether  of  the  two  was  zealous  in  wisdom  is  not 
plain  to  man,  who  is  so  easily  mistaken,  but  to  the 
Lord,  who  will  judge  between  them  at  the  last  day." 


William     FitzOsbert,     called 
Longbeard 

The  First  English  Agitator 
1196 


AUTHORITIES  :  Roger  of  Hoveden  ;  William  of  New- 
burgh  ;  Gervase  of  Canterbury  ;  Matthew  Paris  ;  Ralph 
Diceto;  (Rolls  Series)  ;  Rotuli  Curice  Regis  (Sir  F.  Pal- 
grave.  Vol.  I.). 


WILLIAM  FITZOSBERT 
CALLED  LONGBEARD,  THE 
FIRST  ENGLISH  AGITATOR 

1196 

WHEN  Richard  I.,  on  his  accession, 
picked  out  Hubert  Walter,  Bishop  of 
Salisbury,  to  be  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, he  chose  a  prelate  whom  he  could 
rely  upon  as  his  representative.  Hubert  had  been  a 
crusader  ;  he  was  the  nephew  of  Ralph  Glanville — 
who  sold  the  justiciarship  to  William  Longchamp, 
Bishop  of  Ely,  for  ,£3,000,  and  followed  Richard  to 
Palestine,  dying  of  the  plague  at  Acre  in  1 191 — and 
though  a  man  of  little  learning  he  was  a  capital 
lawyer,  a  strong  administrator  and  expert  at  raising 
money  for  the  king.1  Hubert  was  no  champion  of 
the  poor  as  St.  Thomas  had  been,  no  preacher  of 
righteousness  like  St.  Anselm,  no  stickler  for  the 
rights  of  the  Church  or  the  liberties  of  the  people  ; 
he  was  "  the  king's  man,"  and  "  forasmuch  as  he  was 
neither  gifted  with  a  knowledge  of  letters  nor  endued 
with  the  grace  of  lively  religion,  so  in  his  days  the 
Church  of  England  was  stifled  under  the  yoke  of 
bondage."  (Geraldus  Cambrensis.) 

1  "  Hubert  was  very  gracious  in  the  eyes  of  all  the  host  that  lay 
before  Acre,  and  in  warlike  things  so  magnificent  that  he  was  admired 
even  by  King  Richard.  He  was  in  stature  tall,  in  council  prudent,  and 
though  not  having  the  gift  of  eloquence,  he  was  an  able  and  shrewd 
wit.  His  mind  was  more  on  human  than  divine  things,  and  he  knew  all 
the  laws  of  the  realm." — Gervase. 

69 


70  Leaders  of  the  People          [1196 

Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  occupied  with  the  cru- 
sades, had  no  mind  for  the  personal  government  of 
England.  He  depended  on  his  ministers  for  money 
to  pay  for  his  military  expeditions  to  Palestine. 
England  was  to  him  nothing  more  than  a  subject 
province  to  be  bled  by  taxation.  Both  William 
Longchamp  and  Hubert  Walter — to  whom  Richard 
committed  the  realm  when  he  left  England  for  good 
in  1194 — did  all  that  could  be  done  to  meet  the 
king's  demands.  Government  offices,  earldoms  and 
bishoprics  were  sold  to  the  highest  bidder.1  Judges 
bought  their  seats  on  the  bench  and  cities  bought 
their  charters.  Crown  lands  already  granted  to 
tenants  were  again  taken  up  by  the  king's  authority, 
and  the  occupier  compelled  to  pay  for  readmission 
to  his  holding.  Tournaments  were  revived,  because 
everyone  taking  part  was  obliged  to  take  a  royal 
license.  Even  the  great  seal  was  broken  by  the 
justiciar's  authority,  and  all  documents  signed  by  it 
had  to  be  reissued,  with  the  payment  of  the  usual 
fees  (or  stamp  duties)  for  new  contracts.  "  By  these 
and  similar  inquisitions  England  was  reduced  to 
poverty  from  one  sea  to  the  other,"  for  more  than 
;£  i, 000,000  was  sent  to  Richard  by  Hubert  in  the 
first  two  years  of  his  justiciarship. 

The  only  protest  against  the  general  distress 
came  from  London,  and  not  from  the  aldermen  or 
burghers,  but  from  the  voteless  labouring  people 
upon  whom  the  whole  burden  of  raising  the  city's 
taxes  had  been  thrown.  Against  this  monstrous 

O 

injustice  William   Longbeard  FitzOsbert  stood  out 

1  It  is  notable  that  in  our  day  only  peerages  and  knighthoods  are 
sold,  and  these  by  political  leaders  to  their  partisans.  Government 
offices,  the  judicial  bench  and  bishoprics  are  still  fortunately  not  in  the 
market,  though  frequently  allotted  for  partisan  reasons. 


1196)  William  FitzOsbert  71 

as  the  spokesman  of  the  poor  of  London,  and  died  a 
martyr  for  their  cause. 

London's  political  importance  had  been  seen  in 
the  struggles  against  King  Cnut  and  William  the 
Conqueror.  Its  remarkable  influence  in  national 
politics  (an  influence  that  endured  to  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century)  was  manifest  when 
London  acclaimed  Stephen  as  King  of  England  in 
1135.  At  the  close  of  the  twelfth  century,  London, 
with  the  civic  charter  it  had  just  obtained  from 
Richard,  with  its  thirteen  convent  churches  and  more 
than  a  hundred  parish  churches  within  its  boundaries, 
with  its  great  cattle  market  at  Smithfield  and  its 
growing  riverside  trade,  was  already  prosperous  and 
overcrowded.  "The  city  was  blessed  with  the  health- 
iness of  the  air  and  the  nature  of  its  site,  in  the 
Christian  religion,  in  the  strength  of  its  towers,  the 
honour  of  its  citizens  and  the  purity  of  its  women  ; 
it  was  happy  in  its  sports  and  fruitful  of  high  spirited 
men."  It  had  its  darker  side,  but  at  that  time  "the 
only  plagues  were  the  intemperate  drinking  of  foolish 
people  and  the  frequent  fires." 

Richard's  charter  left  to  the  citizens  the  business 
of  assessing  their  own  taxes,  and  in  1196  there  was 
trouble  over  this  matter  ;  for  in  that  year  the  city 
fathers  decided  that  the  large  sums  required  by 
Archbishop  Hubert  for  the  king's  needs  should  be 
paid  in  full  by  the  poorer  craftsmen  and  labourers, 
who  had  no  say  in  the  matter.1 

"And  when  the  aldermen  assembled  according  to 
usage  in  full  hustings  for  the  purpose  of  assessing 
the  taxes,  the  rulers  endeavoured  to  spare  their  own 

1  "Owing'  to  the  craft  of  the  richer  citizens  the  main  part  of  the 
burden  fell  on  the  poor." — Matthew  Paris. 


72  Leaders  of  the  People          [1196 

purses  and  to  levy  the  whole  from  the  poor."  (Roger 
of  Hoveden.) 

Whereupon  up  rose  William  Longbeard,  the  son 
of  Osbert,  and  made  his  memorable  protest  against 
these  rascally  proceedings,  to  go  down  to  history  as 
the  first  popular  agitator  in  England. 

An  exceptional  man  was  this  Longbeard,  a  man 
of  commanding  stature  and  great  strength,  ready 
witted,  something  of  an  orator  and  a  lawyer,  who 
"  burning  with  zeal  for  righteousness  and  fair  play 
made  himself  the  champion  of  the  poor,"  holding  that 
every  man,  rich  or  poor,  should  pay  his  share  of  the 
city's  burdens  according  to  his  means. 

Longbeard  was  not  of  the  labouring  people  him- 
self. He  was  a  member  of  the  city  council,  though 
by  no  means  a  rich  man.  He  had  distinguished 
himself  as  a  crusader  in  1 190,  making  the  journey  to 
Portugal  against  the  Moors;  and  a  vision  of  St. 
Thomas  Becket  had  appeared  to  him  and  his  fellow 
Londoners  when  their  ship  was  beset  by  storms  off 
the  coast  of  Spain. 

Longbeard  was  known  to  the  king,  and  he  was 
already  hateful  to  the  ruling  class  because  he  had 
declared  that  Richard  was  being  defrauded  by  finan- 
cial corruption  of  the  money  raised  for  the  crown. 
He  had  also  accused  his  brother  of  treason  in  1 194, 
but  the  case  was  not  proved. 

Richard  was  in  Normandy  in  1196,  and  Long- 
beard  having  banded  together  15,000  men  in  Lon- 
don, under  an  oath  that  they  would  stick  by  him  and 
each  other,  went  to  the  king  and  laid  their  grievances 
before  him.  Richard  heard  the  appeal  sympatheti- 
cally enough,  for  after  all,  as  long  as  the  money  was 
forthcoming,  he  had  no  particular  desire  that  the 


1196]  William  FitzOsbert  73 

pockets  of  rich  burghers  should  be  spared  at  the 
expense  of  the  poor,  but  left  matters  in  the  hands  of 
Archbishop  Hubert  the  justiciar.  Longbeard  re- 
turned to  London,  and  with  his  iz^ooo1  workmen  in 
revolt,  bid  an  open  defiance  to  the  justiciar. 

Only  a  fragment  of  one  of  Longbeard's  speeches 
has  been  preserved,  a  solitary  specimen  of  popular 
oratory  in  the  twelfth  century.2 

Taking  a  passage  from  the  prophet  Isaiah  for  his 
text :  "  Therefore  with  joy  shall  ye  draw  water 
from  the  wells  of  the  Saviour"  (Isaiah  xii,  3),  the 
agitator  delivers  his  message. 

"  I  am,"  he  saith,  "the  saviour  of  the  poor.  You 
the  poor,  who  have  endured  the  hard  hands  of  the 
rich,  draw  ye  from  my  wells  the  waters  of  sound 
doctrine,  and  this  with  joy,  for  the  time  of  your 
visitation  is  at  hand.  For  I  will  divide  the  waters 
from  the  waters,  and  the  People  are  the  waters.  I 
will  divide  the  humble  and  faithful  from  such  as  are 
proud  and  froward.  I  will  divide  the  just  from  the 
unjust,  even  as  light  from  darkness." 

For  a  time  Longbeard  was  too  strong  for  the 
justiciar.  Archbishop  Hubert  had  no  force  at  his 
disposal  for  the  invasion  of  London,  for  a  battle 
with  Longbeard  and  his  league. 

At  a  great  gathering  of  citizens,  held  in  St.  Paul's 
Churchyard,  the  justiciar's  men  sent  to  arrest  Long- 
beard  had  been  driven  out  of  the  city  with  violence. 
All  that  Hubert  could  do  was  to  give  orders  for  the 
arrest  of  any  lesser  citizens  found  outside  London, 
and  two  small  traders  from  the  city  actually  were 
taken  into  custody  at  the  town  of  Stamford  on  Mid- 
Lent  Sunday,  1196,  under  this  authority. 

1  Some  writers  say  50,000.        2  William  of  Newburgh. 


74  Leaders  of  the  People          [1196 

But  the  aldermen  grew  more  and  more  frightened 
at  Longbeard's  bold  speeches  and  his  big  public 
meetings,  and  weakness  and  cowardice  began  to 
demoralise  the  league.  The  people,  who  had 
risen  for  "liberty  and  freedom,"  fell  away  from 
their  leader,  and  FitzOsbert  was  left  with  a 
comparatively  small  band  to  face  the  anger  of  the 
justiciar. 

Backed  up  by  the  city  fathers,  Hubert's  officers 
again  attempted  to  seize  the  agitator.  Longbeard, 
hardly  pressed,  snatched  an  axe  from  one  of  his  assail- 
ants— a  citizen  named  Godfrey — and  slew  him  ;  and 
then  retreated,  overwhelmed  by  numbers,  to  take 
refuge  in  the  church  of  St.  Mary-le-Bow  in  Cheap- 
side.  There  was  a  right  of  sanctuary  in  this 
church,  a  right  not  to  be  denied  to  the  commonest 
felon. 

But  what  were  rights  of  sanctuary  to  the  justiciar 
— bent  on  hunting  his  prey  to  the  death  ?  He  com- 
manded Longbeard  "to  come  out  and  abide  by  the 
law,"  and  gave  orders  to  his  men  that,  failing  instant 
obedience,  he  was  to  be  dragged  out. 

Longbeard's  answer  was  to  climb  up  into  the 
church  tower,  and  thereupon  Hubert  ordered  the 
tower  to  be  set  on  fire,  and  this  was  done.  And 
now  the  only  chance  of  life  for  William  Longbeard 
and  his  followers  was  to  cut  their  way  through 
the  host  of  their  enemies  and  make  a  bold  rush 
for  safety.  It  was  a  remote  chance  at  the  best, 
but  sooner  that  than  to  perish  in  the  burning 
tower. 

At  the  very  church  door  Longbeard  was  struck 
down — some  say  by  Godfrey's  son — and  his  little 
company  were  quickly  slain  or  taken  prisoners. 


1196]  William  FitzOsbert  75 

Loaded  with  chains,  the  once  bold  advocate  of  the 
poor  of  London,  now  badly  hurt,  was  at  once  haled 
off  to  the  Tower.  Sentence  was  pronounced  with- 
out delay  of  the  law,  William,  the  son  of  Osbert, 
was  to  be  dragged  to  the  elms  at  Tyburn  and  there 
hanged  in  chains. 

A  few  days  later — it  was  just  before  Easter — the 
wounded  man  was  stripped  naked,  tried  to  the  tail 
of  a  horse  and  dragged  over  the  rough  stones  of  the 
streets  of  London.  He  was  dead  before  Tyburn 
was  reached,  but  the  poor  broken  body,  on  whom 
the  full  vengeance  of  the  rich  and  mighty  had  been 
wreaked,  was  strung  up  in  chains  beneath  the 
gallows  elm  all  the  same.  Bravely  had  Longbeard 
withstood  the  rulers  of  the  land  in  the  day  of  his 
strength  ;  now,  when  life  had  passed  from  him,  his 
body  was  swinging  in  common  contempt.  And 
with  him  were  nine  of  his  followers  hanged. 

So  died  William,  called  Longbeard,  son  of  Osbert, 
"  for  asserting  the  truth  and  maintaining  the  cause 
of  the  poor."  And  since  it  is  held  that  to  be  faithful 
to  such  a  cause  makes  a  man  a  martyr,  people 
thought  he  deserved  to  be  ranked  with  the  martyrs. 
For  a  time  multitudes — the  very  folk  who  had 
fallen  away  from  their  champion  in  the  hour  of 
battle  and  need — flocked  to  pay  reverence  to  the 
ghastly,  bloodstained  corpse  that  hung  at  Tyburn, 
and  pieces  of  the  gibbet  and  of  the  bloodstained 
earth  beneath  were  carried  off  and  counted  as  sacred 
relics.  All  the  great,  heroic  qualities  of  the  man 
were  recalled.  He  was  accounted  a  saint.  Miracles 
were  alleged  to  take  place  when  his  relics  were 
touched. 

Then  the  dead  man's  enemies  were  aroused,  an 


76  Leaders  of  the  People          [1196 

alleged  death-bed  confession  was  published,  wherein 
Longbeard  was  made  out  to  be  a  sorry  criminal. 
Not  the  least  of  the  offences  laid  to  his  charge 
was  that  a  woman,  who  was  not  his  wife,  had  stood 
faithfully  by  the  rebel,  even  when  the  church  was  on 
fire. 

The  times  were  rough.  It  is  probable  that  Long- 
beard,  crusader  and  fighting  man,  had  sins  enough 
to  confess  before  death  took  him.  But  his  traducers 
were  silent  as  to  these  sins  in  the  man's  lifetime. 
They  waited  until  no  answer  could  be  given  before 
uttering  their  miserable  libels  against  the  one 
courageous  champion  of  the  poor. 

Longbeard  had  roused  the  common  working 
people  to  make  a  stand  against  obvious  oppression 
and  injustice — there  was  the  head  and  front  of  his 
offending,  there  was  his  crime  ;  earning  for  him  not 
only  a  felon's  death,  but  the  loss  of  character,  and 
the  branding  for  all  time  with  the  contemptuous 
title  "  Demagogue." 

Yet  in  the  slow  building  up  of  English  liberties 
William  FitzOsbert  played  his  part,  and  laid  down 
his  life  in  the  age-long  struggle  for  freedom,  as  many 
a  better  has  done. 

In  1198,  two  years  after  the  death  of  Longbeard, 
Hubert  was  compelled  to  resign  the  justiciarship. 
His  monks  at  Canterbury,  to  whom  the  Church  of 
St.  Mary,  in  Cheapside,  belonged,  and  who  had  no 
love  for  their  archbishop,1  indignant  at  the  violation 
of  sanctuary  and  the  burning  of  their  church, 
appealed  to  the  king  and  to  the  pope,  Innocent  III. 

1  "  Hubert,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was  a  shrewd  financier,  and 
an  honourable,  conscientious  statesman  ;  but  as  a  prelate  he  is  noted 
chiefly  for  his  quarrels  with  his  chapter."  —  W.  H.  Hutton,  Social 
England. 


1196]  William  FitzOsbert  77 

to  make  Hubert  give  up  his  political  activities  and 
confine  himself  to  the  work  of  an  archbishop.  In 
the  same  year  a  great  council  of  the  nation,  led  by 
St.  Hugh  of  Lincoln,  flatly  refused  a  royal  demand 
for  money  made  by  Hubert. 

"Innocent  III.  was  against  him,  the  great  barons 
were  against  him,  and  Hubert  resigned.  But  he 
held  the  archbishopric  till  1205. 


Stephen  Langton  and  the 
Great  Charter 

1207 — 1228 


AUTHORITIES  :  Roger  of  Wendover  and  Matthew 
Paris  ;  Walter  of  Coventry ;  Ralph  of  Coggeshall  (Rolls 
Series) ;  Letters  of  Innocent  III.  ;  Rymer's  Foedera  ;  K. 
Norgate  — John  Lackland',  Stubbs  —  Select  Charters  ; 
Mark  Pattison — Stephen  Langton  (Lives  of  the  English 
Saints) ;  C.  E.  Maurice — Stephen  Langton. 


STEPHEN  LANGTON  AND 
THE  GREAT  CHARTER 

1207-1228 

WHEN     Hubert    Walter,    Archbishop    of 
Canterbury  —  the     old     Justiciar    of 
Richard    I. — ended    his    long    life    of 
public  service  on  July  I2th,  A.D.  1205, 
King  John  exclaimed,  with  frank  satisfaction,  "Now 
for  the   first  time   I   am   King  of  England  !  "     As 
long  as  Hubert  was  alive  there  was  one  man  strong- 
enough  to  restrain  the  king,  and   the  primate  and 
William  the  Marshall  together  had  done  something 
to   guard    England    against   the    foulest   and    most 
ruthless    tyranny    of  all    its    kings.      To    the    end 
William    the    Marshall   was   a   brave    and  patriotic 
statesman,  but  he  served  the  crown  rather  than  the 
people. 

On  Hubert's  death  John  meant  to  have  for  arch- 
bishop a  creature  of  his  will,  and  he  was  defeated  by 
Pope  Innocent  III.,  who,  dismissing  the  appeal  of 
the  monks  of  Canterbury  for  Reginald,  their  sub- 
prior,  and  John's  appeal  for  his  nominee,  John  de 
Gray,  Bishop  of  Norwich,  proposed  the  English- 
born  Cardinal,  Stephen  Langton,  "  than  whom  there 
was  no  man  greater  in  the  Roman  court,  nor  was 
there  any  equal  to  him  in  character  and  in  learning." 
The  monks  consented  to  Stephen's  appointment, 
but  John's  reply  was  a  flat  refusal,  and  when 

81  7 


82  Leaders  of  the  People         [1207- 

on  June  7th,  1207,  Pope  Innocent  proceeded  to 
consecrate  Stephen  Langton  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, the  king's  rage  broke  out.  Innocent's  wise 
judgment  gave  England  one  of  its  noblest  and 
greatest  archbishops,  and  the  service  wrought  by 
Langton  for  the  liberties  of  England's  people  was 
of  deep  arid  lasting  value.  But  the  immediate  price 
to  be  paid  for  later  profit  was  heavy. 

John  met  Langton's  consecration  by  seizing  the 
estates  of  Canterbury,  driving  the  chapter  into  exile, 
and  proclaiming  that  anyone  who  acknowledged 
Stephen  as  archbishop  should  be  accounted  a  public 
enemy.  The  remonstrances  and  warnings  of  the 
pope  were  disregarded,  and  in  March,  1208,  all 
England  was  laid  under  an  interdict,  and  there  was 
an  end  to  the  public  ministrations  of  religion  in  the 
country  for  six  years — to  the  bitter  distress  of  the 
common  people. 

Immediately  the  interdict  came  into  force,  John 
declared  all  the  property  of  the  clergy,  secular  or 
monastic,  to  be  confiscated,  and  there  was  no  one 
to  stay  his  hand  from  speedy  spoliation.  For  the 
barons  were  willing  enough  to  see  the  clergy  robbed 
and  the  king's  treasury  filled  at  the  expense  of  the 
Church,  and  of  the  bishops  only  two  were  left  in 
England — Peter  des  Roches,  of  Winchester,  and 
John  de  Gray,  of  Norwich — and  both  these  were 
willing  tools  of  the  king.  Never  did  John  enjoy  his 
royal  will  and  pleasure  with  such  unhindered  ferocity 
as  in  that  year  1209.  Had  the  barons  stood  by  the 
Church  they  might  have  saved  England  unspeakable 
miseries,  and  as  it  was  the  laity  were  soon  in  as 
sorry  a  plight  as  the  clergy,  "  and  it  seemed  as 
though  the  king  was  courting  the  hatred  of  every 


-1228]  Stephen  Langton  83 

class  of  his  subjects,  so  burdensome  was  he  to  both 
rich  and  poor."1 

In  12 1 1  came  Pandulf  from  Pope  Innocent  with 
suggestions  for  peace.  Let  the  king  restore  the 
property  of  the  clergy,  and  receive  Archbishop 
Langton,  with  his  kinsmen  and  friends,  and  the 
other  exiled  bishops  "fairly  and  in  peace"  and  the 
interdict  should  be  withdrawn.  John  declined  to 
receive  Langton  as  archbishop,  and  Pandulf,  in  the 
presence  of  the  whole  council,  pronounced  the  papal 
sentence  of  excommunication  on  the  king,  absolving 
all  his  subjects  from  allegiance,  and  commanding 
their  obedience  to  whomsoever  should  be  sent  as 
John's  successor. 

John  treated  the  excommunication  with  cheerful 
contempt,  and  pursued  the  evil  tenour  of  his  way. 
But  his  position  was  precarious,  for  the  barons — 
especially  the  northern  barons — were  plotting  his 
overthrow,  and  the  pope  had  decided  that  Philip  of 
France  should  depose  John  and  reign  in  his  stead. 
John  was  driven  to  capitulate  to  the  pope  at  the  end 
of  12 12,  and  in  May,  1213,  Pandulf  arrived,  and 
the  invasion  by  Philip  was  stopped,  to  the  exceeding 
annoyance  of  the  French  king. 

John  met  the  papal  legate  at  Ewell,  near  Dover, 
and  in  the  presence  of  "  the  great  men  of  the 
realm,"  swore  to  carry  out  all  Innocent's  demands, 
promising  that  Stephen  should  be  received  and 
recompense  paid  to  the  clergy  for  their  losses. 
Then  the  King  of  England  formally  surrendered 
"  to  God  and  to  the  Holy  Mother  Church  of  Rome, 
and  to  Pope  Innocent  and  his  Catholic  successors," 
the  whole  realm  of  England  and  Ireland,  "  with  all 

1  Matthew  Paris. 


84  Leaders  of  the  People          [1207- 

rights  thereunto  appertaining,  to  receive  them  back 
and  hold  them  thenceforth  as  a  feudatory  of  God 
and  the  Roman  Church."  He  swore  fealty  to  the 
pope  for  both  realms,  and  added  that  he  would  send 
a  yearly  tribute  of  1,000  marks.  At  the  same  time 
John  declared  that  the  act  of  homage  was  voluntary, 
done,  "  not  at  the  driving  of  force  nor  the  compulsion 
of  fear,  but  of  our  own  good  free  will  and  by 
the  common  counsel  of  our  barons." 

There  is  no  evidence  that  the  pope  asked  for  this 
abject  submission,  but  there  are  good  reasons  why 
John  desired  that  political  protection  of  the  papacy 
which  he  obtained  by  the  act  of  homage.1  (Matthew 
Paris  has  a  story  that  John  was  willing  to  pay 
homage  and  tribute  to  the  Mohammedan  Emir  of 
Morocco  in  order  to  effect  an  alliance  with  some 
foreign  power.) 

The  barons  themselves  appealed  to  the  pope  two 
years  later  to  take  their  part  against  John,  on  the 

1  "If  he  was  to  give  up  all  for  which  he  had  been  fighting,  and 
fig-hting-  sucessfully,  against  the  pope  and  the  Church  for  the  past  six 
years,  he  must  make  quite  sure  of  gaining  such  an  advantage  as  would 
be  worth  the  sacrifice.  Mere  release  from  excommunication  and 
interdict  was  certainly,  in  his  eyes,  not  worth  any  sacrifice  at  all.  To 
change  the  pope  from  an  enemy  into  a  political  friend  was  worth  it,  but 
— from  John's  point  of  view — only  if  the  friendship  could  be  made  some- 
thing much  more  close  and  indissoluble  than  the  ordinary  official 
relation  between  the  pope  and  every  Christain  sovereign.  He  must 
bind  the  pope  to  his  personal  interest  by  some  special  tie  of  such  a 
nature  that  the  interest  of  the  papacy  itself  would  prevent  Innocent 
from  casting  it  off  or  breaking  it.  ...  To  outward  personal 
humiliation  of  any  kind  John  was  absolutely  indifferent,  when  there  was 
any  advantage  to  be  gained  by  undergoing  it.  To  any  humiliation 
which  the  crown  or  the  nation  might  suffer  in  his  person,  he  was  in- 
different under  all  circumstances.  His  plighted  faith  he  had  never  had  a 
moment's  hesitation  in  breaking,  whether  it  were  sworn  to  his  father,  his 
brother,  his  allies  or  his  people,  and  he  would  break  it  with  equal 
facility  when  sworn  to  the  supreme  pontiff.  .  .  .  There  seems,  in 
short,  to  be  good  reason  for  believing  that  John's  homage  to  the  pope 
was  offered  without  any  pressure  from  Rome  and  on  grounds  of 
deliberate  policy." — K.  Norgate,  John  Lackland. 


-1228]  Stephen  Langton  85 

ground  that  it  was  only  by  their  compulsion  the  king 
had  been  brought  to  pay  homage  to  Rome,  and 
though  they  were  then  to  curse  the  papal  overlord- 
ship  they  had  helped  procure,  and  England  was  to 
come  to  regard  John's  surrender  to  the  pope  as 
"  a  thing  to  be  detested  for  all  time,"  in  that  year  1213 
the  protection  of  the  pope  was  invaluable  to  John 
and,  as  some  thought,  to  the  country.  "  For  matters 
were  in  such  a  strait,  and  so  great  was  the  fear  on 
all  sides,  that  there  was  no  more  ready  way  of  avoid- 
ing the  imminent  peril — perhaps  no  other  way  at  all. 
For  when  once  he  had  put  himself  under  apostolical 
protection  and  made  his  realms  a  part  of  the  patri- 
mony of  St.  Peter,  there  was  not  in  the  Roman 
world  a  sovereign  who  durst  attack  him  or  would 
invade  his  lands,  in  such  awe  was  Pope  Innocent 
held  above  all  his  predecessors  for  many  years 
past."  (Walter  of  Coventry.) 

The  long  war  being  at  an  end  Stephen  Langton 
and  four  of  the  exiled  bishops  landed  in  June,  and 
Stephen  was  now  to  do  the  work  of  archbishop,  the 
work  he  had  been  solemnly  consecrated  to  six  years 
before. 

John  met  the  primate  at  Winchester,  and  swore 
on  the  gospels  in  the  cathedral  "  that  he  would 
cherish,  defend  and  maintain  the  holy  Church  and 
her  ordained  ministers  ;  that  he  would  restore  the 
good  laws  of  his  forefathers,  especially  St.  Edward's, 
rendering  to  all  men  their  rights  ;  and  that  before 
the  next  Easter  he  would  make  full  restitution  of  all 
property  which  had  been  taken  away  in  connection 
with  the  interdict."  Then  Stephen  formally  absolved 
the  king  from  excommunication  and  gave  him  the 
kiss  of  peace,  to  the  general  rejoicing. 


86  Leaders  of  the  People         [1207- 

And  now  England  was  to  see  what  sort  of  arch- 
bishop it  was  Pope  Innocent  had  sent  to  Canterbury. 
With  a  king  as  cruel  as  he  was  vigorous,  and  as 
astute  as  he  was  unscrupulous,  with  barons  who 
knew  neither  loyalty  nor  patriotism,  Archbishop 
Stephen,  out  of  such  materials,  was  to  win  for  his 
native  land  the  Great  Charter,  and  to  have  it  written 
in  black  and  white  that  all  who  would  might  read 
the  several  duties  of  king  and  people.  In  August 
Langton,  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  read  to  the  barons 
the  old  coronation  charter  of  Henry  I.,  and  reminded 
them  that  the  liberties  promised  in  that  document 
were  to  be  recovered.  "  With  very  great  joy  the 
barons  swore  they  would  fight  for  these  liberties, 
even  unto  death  if  it  were  needful,  and  the  arch- 
bishop promised  that  he  would  help  with  all  his 
might."  Thus  within  three  months  of  his  setting 
foot  in  England  Langton  had  started  the  movement 
for  the  Great  Charter. 

But  not  with  king  and  barons  only  had  the  arch- 
bishop to  deal.  There  were  endless  difficulties  with 
the  clergy  concerning  the  restitution  of  their  pro- 
perty, and  the  payment  of  compensation  to  be 
settled.  And  above  all  there  was  Nicholas,  the 
papal  legate,  in  England,  usurping  the  primate's 
functions,  filling  up  vacant  bishoprics  and  churches, 
regardless  of  the  rights  of  the  Church  and  of  the 
archbishop.  Nicholas  was  recalled  to  Rome  when 
the  interdict  was  finally  removed,  and  in  November, 
1214,  John  made  a  public  proclamation  that  free 
and  undisturbed  election  to  all  the  churches  in  his 
realm  should  be  allowed  henceforth.  This  was  an 
attempt  on  the  king's  part  to  have  the  Church  on 
his  side  against  the  barons,  for  the  battle  was 


-1228]  Stephen  Langton  87 

beginning  between  John  and  the  barons  which  was 
to  be  fought  to  a  bitter  end. 

John's  last  campaign  to  recover  the  lost  Angevine 
provinces  for  the  English  crown  ended  in  disaster, 
and  he  returned  to  England  in  1214  to  face  the  full 
discontent  of  the  barons  whom  he  had  harassed  and 
insulted  from  the  day  he  came  to  the  throne,  and  of 
a  country  suffering  from  "  the  evil  customs  which 
the  king's  father  and  brother  had  raised  up  for  the 
oppression  of  the  Church  and  realm,  together  with 
the  abuses  which  the  king  himself  had  added 
thereto." 

The  national  grievances  were  enormous  and 
intolerable.  The  whole  administration  of  justice 
was  corrupt,  and  no  one  could  be  sure  how  the 
arbitrary  decisions  of  the  king's  officers  would  be 
carried  out.  Liberty  of  the  person  was  a  farce  when 
free  men  could  be  arrested,  evicted  from  their  lands, 
exiled  and  outlawed  without  legal  warrant  or  a  fair 
trial.  "  In  a  word,  the  entire  system  of  government 
and  administration  set  up  under  the  Norman  kings, 
and  developed  under  Henry  and  Richard,  had  been 
converted  by  the  ingenuity  of  John  into  a  most 
subtle  and  effective  engine  of  royal  extortion,  oppres- 
sion and  tyranny  over  all  classes  of  the  nation,  from 
earl  to  villein."1 

Here  and  there  the  barons  had  struck  against 
some  act  of  personal  injury,  and  the  northern  barons 
had  been  conspicuous  in  their  resentment,  refusing 
to  follow  John  as  their  liege  lord  in  his  expeditions  to 
France.  But  there  was  neither  cohesion  nor  any  sense 
of  national  injury  amongst  the  barons  until  Stephen 
Langton,  with  a  full  sense  of  the  responsibility 

1  K.  Norgate,  John  Lackland, 


Leaders  of  the  People          [1207- 

laid  on  the  successor  of  Lanfranc  and  Anselm, 
of  Theobald  and  Thomas,  took  the  lead,  and  by 
strong,  courageous  effort  sought  to  end  for  all  time 
in  England  such  tyranny  as  the  country  had  endured 
under  John's  rule.  To  Langton  this  was  no  mere 
struggle  between  a  despotic  king  and  a  set  of  turbu- 
lent nobles.  It  was  a  struggle  to  win  recognition  of 
law  for  all  men,  and  to  restore  some  measure  of 
justice  and  the  enjoyment  of  fair  liberty  throughout 
the  land.  The  people  had  neither  spokesman  nor 
champion,  and  no  man  heeded  their  wrongs  save 
Langton.  More  than  150  years  were  to  pass  before 
John  Ball  and  Wat  Tyler  would  appear  at  the  head 
of  a  peasant  army  in  revolt.  In  the  reign  of  John, 
yeomen,  peasant  and  artizan  were  dumb.  It  was 
Langton  who  saw  that  the  barons  fighting  for  their 
own  rights  could  be  made  to  fight  for  all  England. 

In  November  the  barons  came  together  at  St. 
Edmundsbury,  and  in  the  abbey  church  "  they  swore 
on  the  high  altar  that  if  the  king  sought  to  evade 
their  demand  for  the  laws  and  liberties  of  the  charter 
of  King  Henry  I.,  they  would  make  war  upon  him 
and  withdraw  from  fealty  to  him  till  he  should  by  a 
charter  furnished  with  his  seal  confirm  to  them  all 
that  they  demanded.  They  also  agreed  that  after 
Christmas  they  would  go  all  together  to  the  king 
and  ask  him  for  a  confirmation  of  these  liberties,  and 
that  meanwhile  they  would  so  provide  themselves 
with  horses  and  arms  that  if  the  king  should  seek  to 
break  his  oath,  they  might,  by  seizing  his  castles, 
compel  him  to  make  satisfaction.  And  when  these 
things  were  done  every  man  returned  to  his  own 
home."  (Roger  of  Wendover.) 

John  kept  Christmas  at  Worcester,  but  his  court 


-1228]  Stephen  Langton  89 

was  very  small,  and  he  realised  that  he  stood 
alone.  All  through  the  years  of  the  interdict  the 
pope's  ban  had  not  kept  the  nobles  from  attendance 
on  the  king  ;  it  was  now  when  he  stood  reconciled 
to  the  Church  that  John  found  himself  deserted. 
He  moved  to  London  at  the  new  year,  and  there  on 
the  Epiphany  came  the  confederate  barons,  making 
display  of  arms,  and  praying  that  the  laws  and 
liberties  of  Edward  the  Confessor  written  in  the 
charter  of  Henry  I.  might  be  confirmed.  John 
urged  that  the  question  was  too  big  and  too  difficult 
to  be  settled  off  hand,  and  asked  that  it  should  be 
put  off  till  Easter.  This  was  agreed  to  on  condition 
that  the  king  pledged  himself  by  three  sureties  to 
fulfil  his  promises.  Archbishop  Stephen,  William 
the  Marshall  and  the  Bishop  of  Ely  were  accepted 
as  sureties,  and  in  accepting  the  post  Langton 
proved  his  great  statesmanship.  There  was  no 
question  of  going  over  to  the  king's  side.  The 
barons  knew  the  archbishop  as  their  chief  ally,  but 
John  knew  that  Langton  was  to  be  trusted  as  im- 
plicitly as  he  trusted  William  the  Marshall.  Lang- 
ton's  one  desire  was  to  see  the  written  enactment 
granting  constitutional  liberties,  and  ending  the 
worst  of  the  royal  abuses. 

John  did  not  waste  the  time  allotted  to  him,  but 
worked  his  hardest  to  gain  friends  and  supporters 
against  the  barons,  and  to  break  up  the  confederacy. 
It  was  all  to  no  purpose.  His  commissioners  to  the 
County  Courts — in  the  southern  and  midland  shires, 
sent  to  explain  the  king's  cause — met  with  no 
success.  Nobles  and  churchmen  alike  stood  aloof, 
and  all  John  could  do  was  to  write  to  the  knights  at 
Poitou  to  send  him  mercenaries,  and  to  appeal  to 


90  Leaders  of  the  People         [1207- 

his  liege  lord,  the  pope,  against  his  rebellious 
subjects.  Finally,  he  took  the  cross,  hoping  for 
the  favours  awarded  to  a  crusader.  These  efforts 
were  all  of  no  avail.  The  mercenaries  were  inade- 
quate. The  pope's  letters  of  rebuke  to  the  barons 
for  their  conspiracies  and  conjurations'  were  un- 
heeded, and  at  Easter,  John  (whom  the  pope  had 
warned  to  harken  to  "just  petitions  ")  was  driven  to 
send  the  primate  and  the  Marshall  for  a  definite 
statement  of  the  laws  and  liberties  demanded. 

The  barons,  who  were  assembled  at  Brackley, 
presented  "a  certain  schedule,"  probably  compiled 
with  Langton's  assistance,  and  this  was  read  to  the 
king  by  the  primate.  "  They  might  as  well  ask  for 
my  kingdom  at  once,"  was  John's  reply  to  the 
various  items,  and  he  swore  he  would  never  grant 
liberties  that  would  mean  his  own  enslavement. 
Both  Langton  and  the  Marshall  strove  to  persuade 
the  king  to  yield,  but  to  no  purpose  ;  and  all  that 
remained  was  to  return  to  the  barons  and  to  state 
that  the  king  refused  their  demands.  Then  the 
barons,  on  hearing  this,  flew  to  arms,  formally 
renounced  their  homage  and  fealty  to  the  king,  and 
chose  a  military  leader  for  themselves — Robert 
Fitz- Walter.  London  welcomed  the  insurgents  on 
May  24th,  and  John,  with  a  handful  of  mercenaries, 
had  the  whole  baronage  against  him.  Capitula- 
tion was  inevitable.  From  Windsor  John  sent 
envoys  to  the  barons  in  London,  promising,  for  the 
sake  of  peace  and  for  the  welfare  and  honour  of  his 
realm,  to  concede  the  laws  and  liberties  demanded, 
and  advising  the  appointment  of  time  and  place  for 
a  meeting  for  "  the  settlement  of  all  these  things." 
The  barons  at  once  fixed  the  meeting  for  June  i5th, 


-1228]  Stephen  Langton  91 

in  a  meadow  called  Runnymead,  between  Staines 
and  Windsor,  and  there,  in  the  presence  of  well- 
nigh  all  the  baronage  of  England,  of  Archbishop 
Stephen,  and  seven  bishops,  and  "a  multitude  of 
most  illustrious  knights,"  the  Great  Charter  was 
signed.  It  was  the  work  of  Langton.1  It  was  he 
who  had  inspired  the  movement,  had  framed  the 
articles,  and  had  brought  the  struggle  to  a  successful 
issue. 

"  One  copy  of  the  Great  Charter  still  remains  in 
the  British  Museum,  injured  by  age  and  fire,  but 
with  the  royal  seal  still  hanging  from  the  brown, 
shrivelled  parchment.  It  is  impossible  to  gaze  with- 
out reverence  on  the  earliest  monument  of  English 
freedom  which  we  can  see  with  our  own  eyes  and 
touch  with  our  own  hands,  the  Great  Charter  to 
which  from  age  to  age  patriots  have  looked  back  as 
the  basis  of  English  liberty."  (J.  R.  Green.) 

Yet  the  Charter  itself  was  in  the  main  but  the 
old  charter  of  Henry  I.  writ  large.  It  set  up  no 
new  rights  and  conferred  no  new  privileges.  It 
sanctioned  no  constitutional  changes,  and  proclaimed 
no  new  liberties.  Its  real  importance  is  in  the  fact 
that  it  was  a  written  document — "  this  great  table 
of  laws,  won  by  the  people  of  England  from  a 
tyrannous  king,  was  the  first  great  act  which  laid 
down  in  black  and  white  the  main  points  of  the 
constitution  and  the  several  rights  and  duties  of 
king  and  people."  (F.  York  Powell.) 

"  The  bonds  of  unwritten  custom,  which  the  older 
grants  did  little  more  than  recognize,  had  proved  too 

1  "  By  the  intervention  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  with  several 
of  his  bishops  and  some  barons,  a  sort  of  peace  (quasi  pax)  was  made 
between  the  king  and  the  barons." — Ralph  of  Coggeshall. 


92  Leaders  of  the  People         [1207- 

weak  to  hold  Angevins  ;  and  the  baronage  now  threw 
them  aside  for  the  restraints  of  written  law.  It  is  in 
this  way  that  the  Great  Charter  marks  the  transition 
from  the  age  of  traditional  rights,  preserved  in  the 
nation's  memory  and  officially  declared  by  the 
primate,  to  the  age  of  written  legislation,  of  parlia- 
ments and  statutes,  which  was  soon  to  come."  (J.  R. 
Green.) 

The  first  article  of  the  Charter  guaranteed  the 
freedom  of  the  English  Church,  and,  in  especial,  the 
freedom  of  elections,  "  which  was  reputed  most 
requisite." 

By  the  Great  Charter  the  feudal  rights  of  the 
king  over  his  vassals  were  defined  and  settled, 
and  the  tenants  of  the  barons  were  protected 
in  similar  way  from  the  lawless  exactions  of  their 
lords. 

No  scutage  or  aid  was  to  be  levied  by  the  crown, 
"  save  by  the  common  council  of  the  realm  " — except 
the  three  customary  feudal  aids  for  the  ransoming 
of  the  king,  the  knighting  of  his  eldest  son,  and  the 
marriage  of  his  eldest  daughter.  This  common 
council,  consisting  of  bishops,  abbots,  earls,  and 
greater  barons,  was  to  be  summoned  by  special  writ. 
The  free  rights  of  London  and  the  other  chartered 
towns  were  fully  admitted. 

The  Court  of  Common  Pleas  (cases  between 
subjects)  was  to  sit  at  Westminster  (and  not  to 
follow  the  king  in  his  wanderings),  and  judges  of 
assize  were  to  go  on  circuit  four  times  a  year. 

No  free  man  was  to  be  seized,  imprisoned,  ousted 
of  his  land,  outlawed,  banished,  or  in  any  way 
brought  to  ruin,  save  by  the  legal  judgment  of  his 
peers  or  by  the  law  of  the  land. 


-1228]  Stephen  Langton  93 

To  no  man  was  justice  to  be  sold,  denied,  or  post- 
poned by  the  king. 

The  free  right  of  Englishmen  and  foreigners  to 
pass  in  and  out  of  the  country  in  time  of  peace  was 
granted. 

The  king's  mercenaries,  "all  the  gang  that  came 
with  horses  and  arms  to  the  hurt  of  the  realm,"  were 
to  be  sent  out  of  England. 

Finally,  by  a  supplementary  document,  the  barons 
present  at  Runnymead  were  to  choose  out  of  the 
whole  baronage  twenty-five  sworn  guardians  of  the 
Charter,  who,  in  the  event  of  any  violation  of  its 
articles,  were  not  to  hesitate  from  making  war  on 
the  king  till  the  matter  had  been  put  right. 

Well  might  John  exclaim,  in  a  wild  burst  of  rage, 
when  the  Charter  was  signed,  and  he  was  alone  with 
his  foreign  troops,  "They  have  given  me  five-and- 
twenty  over-kings  !  " 

The  twenty-five  were  to  ensure  the  king's  obedi- 
ence to  the  Charter,  but  who  was  to  ensure  the  obedi- 
ence of  the  twenty-five  ? —  all  of  whom  were  of  the 
party  of  revolt  against  the  king.  A  safeguard  was 
obviously  necessary,  and  a  second  court  of  barons, 
thirty-eight  in  number,  was  chosen — (which  included 
William  the  Marshall)  —  and  these  first  swore 
obedience  to  the  twenty-five,  and  then  a  second 
oath  to  enforce  on  king  and  barons  mutual 
respect.1 

The  Great  Charter  was  signed,  and  within  a  week 
it  was  published  throughout  all  England.  But  the 
"  sort  of  peace  "  patched  up  between  John  and 
the  barons  was  not  to  last.  None  of  the  barons 
believed  that  the  king  would  abide  by  the  oaths  he 

1  Matthew  Paris,  Greater  Chronicle,  quoted  by  K.  Norgate. 


94  Leaders  of  the  People         [1207- 

had  sworn,  and  they,  for  their  part,  prepared  for 
war.1 

To  the  Continent  John  looked  for  aid,  "seeking 
to  be  revenged  upon  his  enemies  by  two  swords, 
the  sword  of  the  spirit  and  the  sword  of  the  flesh, 
so  that  if  one  failed  he  could  count  upon  the  other 
for  success."  He  had  appealed  to  the  pope  in  May, 
and  Innocent's  reply  had  been  a  general  condemna- 
tion of  all  disturbers  of  the  peace.  Pandulf,  the 
papal  legate,  was  at  Runnymead,  and  in  August, 
when  the  barons  were  openly  making  ready  for 
hostilities,  he  and  Peter  des  Roches,  of  Winchester, 
called  on  Stephen  Langton  to  enforce  the  papal 
sentence  of  excommunication  against  certain  of  the 
barons.  Langton,  who  was  about  to  set  out  to 
Rome  for  a  general  council,  declined  to  do  this  until 
he  had  seen  the  pope  and  discussed  the  whole 
question  with  him.  He  believed  the  sentence  had 
been  drawn  up  by  the  pope  under  a  misunderstand- 
ing. Thereupon  Pandulf  and  Peter  des  Roches,  by 
virtue  of  their  authority,  declared  Stephen  dis- 
obedient to  the  papal  mandate,  and  pronounced  his 
suspension  from  his  office  of  archbishop. 

Langton  made  no  protest  against  the  sentence  but 
went  to  Rome,  and  was  present  at  the  general 
council  in  November.  His  chiefest  work  for  England 
was  done  when  the  Charter  was  signed  at  Runny- 
mead.  With  the  king  and  the  barons  at  civil  war, 
the  country  ravaged  by  John's  foreign  bands  of 
merciless  savages,  and  the  barons  praying  Louis,  the 
son  of  Philip  of  France,  to  take  the  English  crown, 

1  "  The  Charter  was  a  treaty  between  two  powers  neither  of  which 
trusted,  or  even  pretended  to  trust,  the  other." — Stubbs,  Constitutional 
History.  Vol.  II. 


-1228]  Stephen  Langton  95 

what  could  Archbishop  Stephen  accomplish  ?  Pope 
Innocent  had  declared  the  Charter  annulled  on  the 
ground  that  both  king  and  barons  had  made  the 
pope  the  over-lord  of  England,  and  that  in  conse- 
quence nothing  in  the  government  and  constitution 
of  the  country  could  be  altered  without  his  know- 
ledge and  sanction.  But  as  the  legate,  the  primate, 
and  the  bishops  had  all  left  for  Rome,  the  pope's 
disallowing  of  the  Charter  never  got  published  in 
England  at  all,  though  it  was  known  that  he  had 
sent  letters. 

The  sentence  of  suspension  was  removed  from 
Langton  in  February,  1216.  A  few  months  later 
the  great  pope,  Innocent  III.,  passed  away,  and  in 
October  John  was  dead. 

In  1217  Stephen  Langton  was  back  again  at 
Canterbury,  to  remain  for  eleven  more  years  the 
primate  of  England.  With  William  the  Marshall 
and  Hubert  de  Burgh,  Stephen  worked  for  the  pre- 
servation of  public  peace  during  those  early  years  of 
Henry  III.  We  find  him  in  1223  demanding  afresh 
confirmation  of  the  Charter  in  the  council  at  Oxford, 
and  two  years  later  its  solemn  proclamation  is 
required  by  the  archbishop  and  the  barons  as  the 
price  of  a  new  subsidy.  Equally  resolute  is  Arch- 
bishop Stephen  for  public  order,  threatening  with 
all  the  pains  and  penalties  of  excommunication  the 
barons,  who  (in  spite  of  Hubert  de  Burgh's  letters 
from  the  pope  declaring  Henry  to  be  of  age)  were 
anxious  to  keep  the  royal  castles  in  their  own  hands. 
"  At  a  time  when  constitutional  freedom  was  hardly 
known,  when  insurrection  seemed  the  only  possible 
means  of  checking  despotism,  he  (Langton) 
organized  and  established  a  movement  for  freedom 


96  Leaders  of  the  People 

which  by  every  act  and  word  of  his  life  he  showed 
to  be  in  opposition  to  mere  anarchy."  (C.  E. 
Maurice.) 

Stephen  Langton  was  never  canonized,  though 
application  was  made  to  Rome  to  that  end  shortly 
after  his  death  in  1228.  His  learning  had  made  him 
famous  in  Paris  before  Pope  Innocent  summoned 
him  to  Rome  to  become  cardinal  priest  of  St. 
Chrysogonus.  His  wise  statesmanship  was  proved 
by  the  victory  he  won  for  England's  liberties  over 
so  energetic  and  ruthless  a  despot  as  John,  and 
with  such  material  as  the  barons.  His  strength  of 
character  and  disinterested  patriotism  were  impaired 
by  no  taint  of  baseness  or  self  seeking.  If  Stephen 
Langton  is  not  numbered  with  the  saints,  he  ranks 
high  in  the  great  list  of  England's  primates,  serving 
religion  as  faithfully  as  he  served  justice  and  social 
order,  and  his  name  is  resplendent  for  all  time  in  the 
charters  of  English  liberty. 


Bishop    Grosseteste,    the 
Reformer 


AUTHORITIES  :  Letters  of  Robert  Grosseteste,  edited 
by  Luard  ;  Monumenta  Franciscana  ;  Letters  of  A  dam 
of  March  and  Eccleston  on  the  coming  of  the  Friars, 
edited  by  Brewer;  Annales  Monastici — Burton  and 
Dunstable ;  Matthew  Paris  (Rolls'  Series)  ;  Samuel 
Pegge — Life  of  Robert  Grosseteste,  1793  ;  F.  S.  Steven- 
son, M.P.  —  Robert  Grosseteste,  Bishop  of  Lincoln  ; 
M.  M.  C.  Calthrop — Victoria  County  History — Lincoln- 
shire ;  Gasquet — Henry  III.  and  the  Church. 


BISHOP  GROSSETESTE 
THE  REFORMER 

1235-1253 


1 


story  of  Robert  Grosseteste's  bishop- 
hood  is  the  record  of  eighteen  years'  un- 
flinching battle  with  abuses  in  Church 
and  State.  From  his  enthronement  as 
Bishop  of  Lincoln  in  1235  till  his  death  in  1253 
Grosseteste  is  conspicuous  as  a  reformer.  Now  it  is 
the  slackness  of  the  clergy  he  is  combatting,  en- 
forcing discipline  on  men  and  women  who,  vowed 
to  religion,  preferred  an  easier  way  of  life.  At 
another  time  he  is  maintaining  the  laws  and  liberties 
of  the  nation  against  Henry  III.,  who  with  all  his 
piety  knew  neither  honesty  nor  truth  in  his  sove- 
reignty. Right  on  till  the  last  year  of  his  life 
Grosseteste  is  as  vigorous  in  resisting  papal  en- 
croachments on  the  English  Church  as  he  is  in 
dealing  with  his  clergy  or  with  the  king.  As  a 
reformer  his  work  is  threefold  : — (i)  The  correction 
of  current  abuses  in  the  Church.  (2)  Maintenance 
of  justice  under  the  misrule  of  Henry  III.  (3) 
Resistance  to  the  aggressive  claims  of  the  papacy. 
With  all  this  work,  fighting  enemies  of  England  at 
home  and  abroad,  Grosseteste  is  busy  administering 
his  enormous  diocese  of  Lincoln — then  the  largest 
in  the  country,  including  as  it  did  the  counties 
of  Lincoln,  Leicester,  Buckingham,  Huntingdon, 
Northampton,  Oxford  and  Bedford  (Oxford  and 

99 


ioo          Leaders  of  the  People         [1235- 

Peterborough  were  afterwards  carved  out  of  Lin- 
coln)—  and  is  found  writing  to  and  advising  all 
manner  of  men,  kings,  nobles  and  peasants. 

Here  is  the  character  of  Bishop  Grosseteste  as 
his  contemporary,  Matthew  Paris,  saw  it,  and 
Matthew  was  a  monk,  and  the  champion  of  the 
monks,  and  hated  Grosseteste's  stern  interference 
with  monastic  life  : — 

"  He  was  an  open  confuter  of  both  pope  and 
king,  the  corrector  of  monks,  the  director  of  priests, 
the  instructor  of  clerks,  the  support  of  scholars,  a 
preacher  to  the  people,  a  persecutor  of  the  inconti- 
nent, the  tireless  student  of  the  Scriptures,  the 
hammer  and  despiser  of  the  Romans.  At  the  table 
of  bodily  refreshment  he  was  hospitable,  eloquent, 
courteous,  pleasant  and  affable.  At  the  spiritual 
table  devout,  tearful  and  contrite.  In  his  episcopal 
office  he  was  sedulous,  venerable  and  indefatigable." 

Six  hundred  years  later  the  whirligig  of  time 
leaves  this  verdict  of  old  Matthew  Paris  unreversed, 
and  finds  Grosseteste's  reputation  enhanced. 

"  There  is  scarcely  a  character  in  English  history 
whose  fame  has  been  more  constant,  both  during 
and  after  his  life,  than  Robert  Grosseteste,  Bishop 
of  Lincoln  from  1235  to  1253.  As  we  find  his 
advice  sought  universally  during  his  lifetime,  and 
his  example  spoken  of  as  that  which  almost  all  the 
other  prelates  of  his  day  followed,  so  was  it  also 
after  his  death.  If  threats  from  Rome  and  excom- 
munications from  Canterbury  fell  harmlessly  upon 
him  while  alive,  his  example  nerved  others  in  sub- 
sequent years — as  in  the  case  of  Sewal,  Archbishop 
of  York — to  bear  even  worse  attacks  without  giving 
way.  And  probably  no  one  has  had  a  greater 


-1253]  Bishop  Grosseteste  101 

influence  upon  English  thought  and  English  literature 
for  the  two  centuries  which  followed  his  time  ;  few 
books  will  be  found  that  do  not  contain  some  quota- 
tions from  Lincolniensis,  '  the  great  clerk,  Gros- 
test.'"1 

A  Suffolk  man  was  Grosseteste,  and  born  of 
humble  parents.  Sent  to  Oxford  by  his  friends  he 
becomes  master  of  the  schools  and  chancellor  of  the 
university — the  foremost  scholar  of  his  day — receives 
various  ecclesiastical  preferments,  and  at  the  age  of 
sixty  is  freely  elected  by  the  chapter  of  Lincoln  as 
their  bishop.  If  the  canons  of  Lincoln  believed 
that  Grosseteste's  age  would  ensure  comparative 
quiet  for  the  diocese  and  a  continuance  of  the  loose 
order  of  his  immediate  predecessors,  they  were 
speedily  undeceived. 

Grosseteste  brought  into  Lincoln  an  energy  for 
religion  that  disturbed  the  easy-going  monks,  with 
their  comfortable  common-room  life,  and  altogether 
upset  the  secular  clergy  with  their  illegal  marriages 
and  their  parochial  re  veilings.  In  the  first  year  of 
his  authority  Grosseteste's  letter  to  his  archdeacons, 
followed  by  his  diocesan  constitutions,  shows  the 
hand  of  the  reformer.  He  calls  attention  to  the 
neglect  of  the  canonical  hours  of  prayer — certain 
clergy  "  fearing  not  God  nor  regarding  man,  either 
do  not  say  the  canonical  hours  or  say  them  in 
mutilated  fashion,  and  that  without  any  sign  of  de- 
votion, or  at  an  hour  more  suitable  to  their  own 
desires  than  convenient  to  their  parishioners" — to 
the  private  marriages  of  many  priests,  to  the  strife 
and  bloodshed  and  desecration  caused  by  the  miracle 
plays  in  churchyards,  and  to  the  drunkenness  and 

1  Luard.     Preface  to  Grosseteste's  Letters.     Rolls'  Series.     1861. 


IO2          Leaders  of  the  People         [1235- 

gluttony  attendant  on  funeral  feasts.  Grosseteste 
also  complains  that  the  parochial  clergy  oppose  the 
preaching  friars,  "  maliciously  hindering  the  people 
from  hearing  the  sermons  of  the  friars,  and  permit- 
ting those  to  preach  who  make  a  trade  of  it,  and 
who  only  preach  such  things  as  may  draw  money." 
Incidentally,  and  with  a  curiously  modern  touch, 
Grosseteste  urges  his  archdeacons  to  warn  mothers 
and  nurses  against  overlaying  their  children  at  night, 
for  it  seems  many  infants  were  suffocated  in  this  way. 

Grosseteste  relied  on  the  friars,  Franciscan  and 
Dominican,  to  revive  religion  in  his  diocese. 
From  their  first  coming  to  England  he  had  be- 
friended the  little  brothers  of  St.  Francis  and  St. 
Dominic's  order  of  preachers,  and  at  Oxford  had 
been  conspicuously  their  rector.  He  writes  to  Pope 
Gregory  IX.  in  the  highest  praise  of  the  Francis- 
cans :  "Inestimable  benefits  have  been  wrought  in  my 
diocese  by  the  friars.  They  enlighten  our  whole 
land  with  the  bright  light  of  their  preaching  and 
learning." 

The  secular  clergy  and  the  monks  generally  by 
no  means  shared  Grosseteste's  appreciation  of  the 
preachers  of  poverty,  and  when  the  Bishop  of  Lin- 
coln began  to  rout  up  the  monasteries  in  his  dio- 
cese with  visitations  and  enquiries  the  dismay  was 
considerable.  The  Benedictine  monks  in  England 
were  good,  easy  men  in  the  thirteenth  century — 
Grosseteste  finds  no  grave  faults  against  morality  to 
rebuke  in  them — fond  of  their  pleasant  social  life, 
and  enjoying  the  comfort  of  an  existence  that  had 
few  temporal  cares  beyond  finding  money  for  pope 
and  king.  At  the  worst  their  sloth  was  culpable. 
Grosseteste  charged  upon  them  with  his  preaching 


-1253]  Bishop  Grosseteste  103 

friars,  calling  for  amendment  and  the  fulfilment  of 
duties,  attacking  old  abuses  sanctioned  by  custom, 
and  showing  no  tolerant  sympathy  for  the  infirmities 
and  shortcomings  of  middle-aged  clerks.1  Respect 
him  they  must,  for  the  learning  and  high  character 
of  the  bishop  were  conspicuous  in  the  land,  but  the 
dislike  of  all  this  strenuous  exhortation  was  not  con- 
cealed. The  very  chapter  of  Lincoln,  which  had 
elected  him  bishop,  refused  to  admit  Grosseteste  as 
their  visitor,  or  to  acknowledge  his  jurisdiction  over 
their  proceedings,  and  only  after  six  years  of  contro- 
versy and  litigation  was  the  case  finally  decided  at 
Rome  (1245)  wholly  in  the  bishop's  favour.  A  sen- 
tence of  excommunication  pronounced  upon  him  by 
the  monks  at  Canterbury  during  the  vacancy  of  the 
see  was  of  course  entirely  ignored  by  Grosseteste. 
If  the  clergy  resented  Grosseteste's  call  to  arms,  it  is 
to  be  remembered  that  they  had  suffered  consider- 
ably from  the  tyranny  of  the  times,  and  had  been 
reduced  under  the  general  oppression  to  a  feeble 
and  sluggish  timidity.  The  old  "  Song  of  the 
Church  "2  tells  how  low  they  had  fallen  : 

1  A  well-known  passage  in  Matthew  Paris,  vol.  v,  gives  the  monk's 
point  of  view  of  Grosseteste,  the  reformer  : — "  At  this  time  the  Bishop 
of  Lincoln  made  a  visitation  of  the  religious  houses  in  the  diocese.  If 
one  were  to  tell  all  the  acts  of  tyranny  he  committed  therein,  the  bishop 
would  seem  not  merely  unfeeling  but  inhuman  in  his  severity.  For 
amongst  other  things  when  he  came  to  Ramsey  he  went  round  the 
whole  place,  examined  each  one  of  the  monks'  beds  in  the  dormitory, 
scrutinized  everything,  and  if  he  found  anything  locked  up  destroyed  it. 
He  broke  open  the  monks'  coffers  as  a  thief  would,  and  if  he  found  any 
cups  wrought  with  decoration  and  with  feet  to  stand  on  he  broke  them 
to  pieces,  though  it  would  have  been  wiser  to  have  demanded  them 
unbroken  for  the  poor.  He  also  heaped  the  terrible  curses  of  Moses  on 
the  heads  of  those  who  disobeyed  his  injunctions  and  the  blessings  of 

Moses  on  those  who  should  observe  the  same And  it  is  believed 

all  this  he  hath  done  to  restrain  from  sin  those  over  whom  he  hath 
authority,  and  for  whose  souls  he  must  give  account."  This  was  written 
in  1251,  when  Grosseteste  had  been  sixteen  years  at  Lincoln. 

a  Wright,  Political  Songs.     Camden  Society,  1839. 


IO4          Leaders  of  the  People         [1235- 

Free  and  held  in  high  esteem  the  clergy  used  to  be, 
None  were  better  cherished  :  or  loved  more  heartily. 
Slaves  are  they  now  :  despised,  brought  low, 

Betrayed  (as  all  deplore) 

By  those  from  whom  :  their  help  should  come  : 
I  can  no  more. 

King  and  pope  alike  in  this  :  to  one  purpose  hold, 

How  to  make  the  clergy  yield  their  silver  and  their  gold. 

Truth  to  say :  the  pope  gives  way, 

Far  too  much  to  the  king 
Our  tithes  he  grants  :  for  the  crown's  wants 
To  his  liking. 

To  check  the  rapacity  of  the  king,  and  to  stop 
the  seizure  of  Church  revenues  for  Italian  clerics, 
and  thereby  to  raise  the  English  clergy  from  their 
state  of  sluggish  despondency  was  Grosseteste's 
work  for  England.  We  find  him  conspicuous  at  the 
council  summoned  by  the  king  to  meet  at  West- 
minster in  1244.  In  vain  Henry  III.  appealed  for 
money,  bishops  and  nobles  reminded  him  that  the 
money  so  frequently  granted  had  done  no  good 
either  to  the  king  or  the  country,  and  that  a  justiciar 
and  chancellor  must  be  appointed  for  the  strengthen- 
ing of  the  state.  Henry  demurred,  tried  postpone- 
ments and  delays,  and  these  failing,  summoned  the 
bishops  alone,  and  confronted  them  with  a  letter 
from  Pope  Innocent  IV.  exhorting  them  to  give 
liberally  to  the  king.  Even  this  failed  to  move  the 
prelates.  After  much  discussion,  however,  some 
were  for  "  a  mild  answer,"  for  many  of  the  prelates 
"fearing  the  king's  instability  and  the  pusillanimity 
of  the  royal  counsellors,"  were  unwilling  to  deny  the 
pope's  request.  Grosseteste  clinched  the  matter  by 
declaring  they  must  all  stand  together  with  the 


-1253]  Bishop  Grosseteste  105 

barons  :J  "  We  may  not  be  divided  from  the 
common  counsel.  For  it  is  written  if  we  be  divided 
we  shall  all  perish  forthwith."  The  next  day  Henry 
tried  to  get  at  each  of  the  bishops  separately — an 
old  device.  "  But  they  with  wary  heed  would  not  be 
so  entrapped,  and  by  departing  early  in  the  morning 
escaped  the  net  in  which  they  had  once  been  caught  ; 
and  so  the  council  broke  up  to  the  king's  dis- 
content." (Matthew  Paris.) 

Again  in  1252  Henry  summoned  the  bishops,  and 
tried  to  coerce  them  into  giving  him  money  by  pro- 
ducing a  papal  mandate,  authorising  the  payment 
of  a  full  tithe  of  all  Church  revenues  to  the  king  for 
the  space  of  three  years.  To  make  matters  worse, 
"  payment  was  not  to  be  made  on  the  old  assess- 
ment, but  on  a  new  assessment  conducted  with 
strict  inquiry,  at  the  will  and  judgment  of  the  royal 
agents  and  extortioners,  who  would  seek  their  own 
profit  before  the  king's."  The  excuse  was  that  the 
king  was  about  to  start  on  a  pilgrimage.  Grosseteste 
was  then  an  old  man,  but  he  blazed  out  at  this 
monstrous  demand,  especially  when  the  king's 
messengers  went  on  to  explain  that  the  tithe  for  two 
years  might  be  paid  at  once,  and  that  the  third 

1  Grosseteste  had  been  unable  to  get  his  way  with  the  barons  on  the 
question  of  legitimacy  of  children  before  legal  wedlock.  By  the  old 
church  law  marriage  made  such  children  legitimate,  and  at  the  council 
of  Merton,  in  1236,  Grosseteste,  with  the  bishops,  tried  to  bring  the 
common  law  into  union  with  the  church  view  on  this  matter.  He  was 
defeated,  and  to  this  day  these  children  are  illegitimate.  "  It  would 
indeed  have  been  better  if  the  independence  exhibited  by  the  majority 
who  opposed  the  prelates  at  Merton  had  been  reserved  for  another 
occasion  ;  for  it  cannot  be  deemed  that  the  perpetuation  of  a  law  con- 
trary to  that  which  prevails  on  the  subject  in  almost  every  European 
country,  and  which  still  differentiates  Scotland  from  England  by  abroad, 
though  unintelligible  line  of  demarcation,  has  been  open  to  grave 
objection  on  grounds  of  public  convenience,  apart  from  any  inherent 
merits  or  demerits  it  may  possess."  —  F.  S.  Stevenson,  Robert  Grosse- 
teste. 


io6          Leaders  of  the  People         [1235- 

year's  tithe  could  also  be  raised  before  the  king 
actually  started.  "  By  our  Lady,"  said  the  sturdy 
bishop  of  Lincoln,  "what  does  all  this  mean?  You 
assume  that  we  shall  agree  to  this  damnable  levy, 
and  go  on  arguing  from  premises  that  have  not  been 
admitted.  God  forbid  that  we  should  thus  bend 
our  knee  to  Baal." 

The  king's  half-brother,  Ethelmar,  bishop-elect  of 
Winchester,  deprecated  resistance  to  the  will  of 
pope  and  king,  and  urged  that  the  French  had  con- 
sented to  pay  a  similar  demand.  "Yes,"  said  the 
Bishop  of  Ely,  "and  it  brought  their  king  no  good." 
"  For  the  very  reason  the  French  have  yielded  must 
we  resist,"  replied  Grosseteste.  "To  do  a  thing 
twice  makes  it  a  custom,  and  if  we  pay  too,  we 
shall  have  no  peace.  For  my  own  part,  I  say  plainly 
that  I  will  not  pay  this  evil  demand,  lest  the  king 
himself  as  well  as  us  should  incur  the  heavy  wrath 
of  God."  The  other  bishops  followed  Grosseteste's 
lead,  and  the  old  man  went  on  to  advise  them  to 
pray  the  king  to  think  of  his  eternal  salvation,  and 
to  restrain  his  rash  impulses.  Henry  naturally 
declined  to  send  an  independent  remonstrance  to  the 
pope  against  the  mandate,  and  the  bishops  decided 
they  could  do  nothing  in  the  way  of  granting  this 
special  tithe.  But  they  were  hard  put  to  it,  "between 
the  pulling  of  the  king  and  the  pushing  of  the  pope." 

All  Grosseteste's  dealings  with  the  king  show  the 
same  firm  resolution  to  stop  the  royal  extortion,  and 
to  insist  on  the  fulfilment  of  the  charters  of  liberties 
obtained  from  the  crown.  He  carries  on  the  work 
of  Stephen  Langton,  always  backing  up  the  un- 
successful efforts  of  the  good  St.  Edmund  Rich 
(Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  1234-1240)  to  keep 


-1253]  Bishop  Grosseteste  107 

Henry  faithful  to  his  word,  and  prepares  the  way  for 
the  great  campaign  of  his  friend  Simon  of  Mont- 
fort.1  The  very  worst  period  of  Henry's  long 
reign  is  covered  by  Grosseteste's  episcopal  life. 
Hubert  de  Burgh's  wise  rule  was  over  by  1232,  and 
Peter  des  Roches  and  the  horde  of  aliens  were 
fleecing  the  country  for  the  next  twenty  years.  It 
is  not  till  after  Grosseteste's  death  that  the  barons 
dealt  with  Henry's  misrule  to  any  purpose. 

At  the  great  council  held  in  London  in  1248,  at 
which  Grosseteste  was  present,  a  full  list  of  the 
national  grievances  is  given  :  the  lavish  waste  of  the 
wealth  of  the  country  on  foreigners,  the  ruin  of 
trade  by  the  arbitrary  seizure  of  goods  by  the  king 
and  his  agents,  the  robbery  of  poor  fishermen  by 
royal  authority,  "  so  that  they  think  it  safer  to  trust 
themselves  to  the  stormy  waves  and  seek  a  further 
shore,"  and  the  keeping  bishoprics  and  abbacies 
vacant  so  that  the  crown  may  enjoy  the  revenues 
therefrom,  are  the  chief  causes  of  complaint.  They 
were  not  new  grievances,  for  the  most  part,  and  they 

1  "Grosseteste,  then,  may  be  regarded  in  a  threefold  aspect ;  first,  as  a 
reformer  who  sought  to  reform  the  Church  from  within  and  not  from 
without,  by  the  removal  of  existing  abuses,  by  the  encouragement  he 
gave  to  the  great  religious  revival  of  the  early  part  of  the  i3th  century, 
and  by  the  example  of  unflinching  fearlessness  and  rectitude  which  he 
set  in  his  performance  of  the  episcopal  office ;  secondly,  as  the  teacher 
who  guided  the  rising  fortunes  of  the  University  of  Oxford  ;  and  thirdly, 
as  the  statesman  who,  applying  to  new  conditions  the  policy  associated 
with  the  name  of  Stephen  Langton,  endeavoured  to  combine  into  one 
effort  the  struggle  of  the  clergy  for  the  liberties  of  the  Church  with  the 
struggle  of  the  laity  for  the  liberties  of  the  nation,  imbued  Simon  de 
Montfort  with  principles  of  '  truth  and  justice  '  which  went  far  beyond 
the  mere  maintenance  of  the  privileges  of  his  own  order,  and  at  the 
same  time,  by  his  effort  to  reconcile  him  with  his  sovereign,  and  by  the 
whole  tenour  of  his  actions,  showed  that  had  he  lived  a  few  years  longer, 
his  influence  would  have  been  directed  to  the  task  of  achieving  by 
peaceful  means  the  constitutional  advance  brought  about  by  those 
who,  taking  the  sword,  perished  by  the  sword."  —  Stevenson,  Robert 
Grosseteste,  Bishop  of  Lincoln. 


io8          Leaders  of  the  People         [1235- 

were  not  to  die  with  Henry  III.,  all  charters  and 
royal  promises  notwithstanding. 

Added  to  the  common  wrongs  of  Henry's  wretched 
misrule  were  the  papal  extortions,  directly  encouraged 
by  the  king.  In  return  for  papal  mandates  directing 
churchmen  to  supply  the  king  with  money,  what 
could  Henry — himself  the  most  devoted  servant  of 
the  papacy — do  but  help  the  pope  to  get  what  he 
could  out  of  England  ?  The  wealth  of  England 
was  held  to  be  of  fabulous  amount  at  Rome,  and 
popes  beset  by  fierce  ungodly  emperors  naturally 
turned  to  it  in  their  need  as  to  a  treasury. 

But  the  thing  was  intolerable  to  Grosseteste.  He 
had  studied  in  Paris,  he  welcomed  Dominican  and 
Franciscan  friars  from  the  continent  as  no  other 
prelate  did,  and  had  no  objection  to  foreigners  per  se. 
But  the  pope  claimed  the  revenues  of  church  livings 
for  boys  and  presented  illiterates  to  benefices — to 
the  obvious  degradation  of  the  Church  in  England. 
Grosseteste  was  always  willing  enough  to  raise  what 
money  he  could  for  the  holy  see,  but  appoint  un- 
worthy and  incompetent  clerks  to  livings  in  his 
diocese,  that  he  would  not  do — not  for  any  pope. 

The  country  groaned  under  the  biting  avarice  of 
the  Roman  see,  as  it  bled  under  the  vampire  politics 
of  Peter  des  Roches  and  his  needy,  greedy  crew  of 
Bretons  and  Poitevins. 

What  it  all  meant  to  England  Matthew  Paris  has 
told  us  in  his  description  of  things  in  1237  : 

"  Now  was  simony  practised  without  shame  and 
usurers  on  various  pleas  openly  extorted  money  from 
the  common  people  and  lesser  folk ;  charity  expired, 
the  liberty  of  the  Church  withered  away,  religion 
was  trampled  to  the  dust.  Daily  did  illiterate 


-1253]  Bishop  Grosseteste  109 

persons  of  the  lowest  class,  armed  with  bulls  from 
Rome,  burst  forth  into  threats  ;  and,  in  spite  of  the 
privileges  handed  down  to  us  from  good  men  of  old, 
they  feared  not  to  plunder  the  revenues  consecrated 
by  our  holy  forefathers  for  the  service  of  religion,  the 
support  of  the  poor,  and  the  nourishment  of  strangers, 
but  thundering  out  their  excommunications  they 
quickly  and  violently  carried  off  what  they  demanded. 
And  if  those  who  were  wronged  and  robbed  sought 
refuge  by  appealing  or  pleading  their  privileges,  they 
were  at  once  suspended  and  excommunicated  by  a 
papal  writ.  Thus  mourning  and  lamentation  were 
heard  on  all  sides,  and  many  exclaimed  with  heart- 
rending sobs,  '  It  were  better  to  die  than  to  behold 
the  sufferings  of  our  country  and  its  saints.  Woe  to 
England,  once  the  chief  of  provinces,  the  mistress 
of  nations,  the  mirror  of  the  Church,  the  exemplar 
of  religion,  and  now  brought  under  tribute, — 
trampled  on  by  worthless  men,  and  the  prey  of  men 
of  low  degree.' ' 

The  arrival  of  Otho,  in  1237,  a  papal  legate  (on 
the  request  of  Henry),  far  from  remedying,  increased 
the  contemporary  distress.  For  though  Otho  was  a 
discreet  man,  he  was  more  eager  to  get  money  for 
Rome  than  to  deal  with  the  oppression  that  plagued 
England,  and  when  he  did  give  advice  it  was  spurned 
by  those  who  saw  his  grasping  hands.  Archbishop 
Edmund  was  particularly  vexed  at  having  a  papal 
legate  set  over  him,  and  what  with  one  disappoint- 
ment and  another  finally  gave  up  in  despair  the  task 
of  guiding  the  English  Church,  and  in  1240  went  to 
die  at  Pontigny,  where  his  predecessors  Anselm  and 
Thomas  had  lived  in  exile. 

Grosseteste  stuck  to  his  post,  and  the  Franciscans 


no          Leaders  of  the  People          [1235- 

and  Dominicans,  whom  he  aided,  poured  in  oil  and 
wine  on  the  wounds  of  the  Church  folk,  and  revived 
religion  in  the  country. 

Grosseteste  fought  the  extortionate  papal  demands 
for  Church  revenues  all  the  time.  In  1239,  with 
his  fellow  bishops,  he  tells  Otho  plainly  that  the 
Church  is  drained  dry  by  the  grasping  importunity 
of  Rome.  Otho  left  in  1241,  and  that  same  year 
saw  Boniface  of  Savoy,  a  handsome,  soldierly  man 
appointed  to  Canterbury  as  St.  Edmund's  successor. 
The  following  year  came  a  new  extortioner  from 
Rome,  named  Martin,  an  altogether  inferior  person 
to  Otho,  but  with  all  the  legate's  powers  of  suspen- 
sion and  excommunication.  His  confiscations  and 
rapacity  provoked  a  remonstrance  to  the  pope  even 
from  Henry.  Martin  at  last,  in  1245,  had  to  fly  for 
his  life  from  England,  and  when  Grosseteste  sub- 
sequently had  a  calculation  made  of  the  English 
Church  revenues  enjoyed  by  foreigners,  it  was  found 
that  the  incomes  of  foreign  clerks  appointed  by  Pope 
Innocent  IV.  amounted  to  more  than  70,000  marks — 
more  than  treble  the  king's  income.  And  all  this 
was  done  in  spite  of  refusals  by  Grosseteste  to 
appoint  illiterates  or  allow  boys  to  hold  benefices. 

The  barons  sided  with  the  Church  against  Martin, 
and  drew  up  a  long  protest  which  they  sent  to  the 
pope  at  the  council  of  Lyons  in  1245.  In  this  they 
complained  : — That  the  pope,  not  content  with 
Peter's  Pence,  which  had  been  paid  cheerfully  from 
old  times,  wrung  money  from  the  Church  against 
the  law  of  the  realm,  without  the  king's  permission  ; 
and  that  the  pope  wrongfully  put  ignorant,  covetous, 
or  absentee  Italians  into  English  livings  notwith- 
standing his  own  promises,  the  rights  of  patrons, 


-1253]  Bishop  Grosseteste  in 

and  the  privileges  of  the  English  clergy.  A  year 
later  the  protest  was  repeated  with  another  item 
objecting  to  the  pope's  claim  to  recall  former 
charters. 

Innocent  IV.'s  answer  to  this  was  to  threaten  to 
dethrone  Henry  as  he  had  dethroned  his  brother-in- 
law,  the  Emperor  Frederick.  The  king  weakly  said 
no  more,  the  barons,  without  a  leader,  were  equally 
silent,  and  the  Church  continued  "  to  sate  the  greed 
of  Rome." 

But  in  Grosseteste  there  was  no  spirit  of  surrender. 
In  1253,  the  very  last  year  of  his  life,  he  was  called 
upon  by  the  pope  to  provide  a  nephew  of  his  with  a 
canonry  at  Lincoln,  and  the  bishop's  letter  of  refusal 
is,  perhaps,  the  only  well  remembered  thing  of  all 
Grosseteste's  writings.  This  letter  was  not,  as 
commonly  stated,  sent  to  the  pope  but  to  his  repre- 
sentative who  was  also  named  Innocent.1  "  The 
pope  has  power  to  build  up,"  wrote  Grosseteste, 
"but  not  to  pull  down.  These  appointments  tend 
to  destruction,  not  edification,  being  of  man's  device 
and  not  according  to  the  words  of  the  Apostles  or 
the  will  of  Christ.  By  my  very  love  and  obedience 
to  the  Holy  See  I  must  refuse  obedience  in  things 
altogether  opposed  to  the  sanctity  of  the  Apostolic 
See  and  contrary  to  Catholic  unity.  As  a  son  and 
a  servant  I  decline  to  obey,  and  this  refusal  must  not 
be  taken  as  rebellion,  for  it  is  done  in  reverence  to 
divine  commands." 

(This  letter  is  quoted  by  Matthew  Paris  and  in 
the  Burton  Annals.  It  can  be  read  in  full  in  the 
Epistles,  No.  128.) 

When  the  pope  heard  of  this  answer  he  talked 

1  See  recent  article  on  "  Grosseteste"  in  Catholic  Encyclopaedia, 


ii2          Leaders  of  the  People         [1235- 

angrily  of  "the  old  madman"  who  dared  to  sit  in 
judgment  on  him,  and  blustered  about  the  king  of 
England  being  his  vassal.  The  cardinals,  however, 
said  frankly  that  Grosseteste  had  spoken  the  truth, 
and  that  he  was  far  too  good  a  man  to  be  con- 
demned. "  He  is  Catholic,"  they  declared,  "  and  of 
deepest  holiness.  More  religious,  and  more  saintly 
than  we  are,  and  of  better  life.  They  say  that 
among  all  the  bishops  there  is  no  one  his  equal,  still 
less  his  superior.  All  the  clergy  of  France  and 
England  know  this.  Besides,  he  is  considered  a 
great  philosopher,  thoroughly  learned  in  Latin  and 
Greek  ;  and  he  is  zealous  for  justice,  and  a  man  who 
deals  in  theology,  a  preacher  to  the  people,  a  lover 
of  chastity,  and  a  persecutor  of  those  who  practise 
simony."  So  they  extolled  him.  And  it  is  to  the 
everlasting  credit  of  the  cardinals  of  the  Roman  See 
in  that  year  1253  that  they  could  discern  the  sincerity 
and  the  great  qualities  of  the  brave  old  bishop  who 
defied  the  pope's  unrighteous  commands.  There 
was  no  question  at  Rome  of  any  disloyalty  on 
Grosseteste's  part  to  the  Holy  See,  no  suggestion 
of  any  failing  as  a  good  Catholic.1  And  Pope 

1  Yet  out  of  this  letter  and  out  of  his  great  knowledge  and  love  of  the 
Scriptures  a  notion  has  been  current  that  Grosseteste  was  a  forerunner 
of  Protestantism,  and  "a  harbinger  of  the  Reformation."  "If  this 
implies  that  he  had  any  tendency  towards  the  doctrinal  changes 
brought  about  in  the  Church  at  the  Reformation,  or  that  he  evidenced 
any  idea  of  a  separation  of  the  Church  of  England  from  that  of  Rome, 
a  more  utterly  mistaken  statement  has  never  been  made." — Luard,  Pre- 
face to  Grosseteste's  Letters.  (Rolls  Series.) 

As  for  Grosseteste's  Scriptural  knowledge,  "  The  thorough  familiarity 
with  the  Old  Testament  is,  perhaps,  only  what  we  might  expect ;  but 
the  use  which  is  made  of  the  actions  of  all  the  characters  of  Scripture, 
and  the  forced  and  sometimes  outrageous  way  in  which  they  are  intro- 
duced to  illustrate  his  argument,  show  how  thoroughly  '  biblical '  the  age 
was,  and  how  completely  the  Old  Testament  history  was  regarded 
rather  as  the  guide  of  men's  conduct  in  Christian  times,  than  as  a  mere 
historical  record  of  past  events." — Ibid. 


-I253J  Bishop  Grosseteste  113 

Innocent  IV.  wisely  let  the  matter  drop,  when  the 
cardinals  assured  him  it  would  never  do  to  interfere 
with  Grosseteste. 

Before  he  died  Grosseteste  made  a  last  appeal  "to 
the  nobles  of  England,  the  citizens  of  London  and 
the  community  of  the  whole  realm  "  on  behalf  of 
the  Rights  of  the  English  Church,  making  a  careful 
list  of  the  ills  to  be  redressed.  He  also  solemnly 
charged  his  friend  Simon  of  Montfort,  never,  as  he 
valued  his  immortal  soul,  to  forsake  the  cause  of  the 
English  people,  but  to  stand  up  even  to  the  death, 
if  needs  be,  for  a  true  and  just  government,  and 
with  prophetic  foresight  spoke  of  the  heavier  troubles 
coming  on  the  land. 

On  October  9th,  1253,  the  long  life  and  the  mag- 
nificent battling  with  odds  were  over,  and  the  great 
bishop  passed  away.  He  was  buried  in  Lincoln 
Cathedral,  and  in  1307,  King  Edward  I.  and  the 
dean  and  chapter  of  St.  Paul's  made  application  for 
his  canonization,  but  without  success.  Fifty  years 
later  and  Edward  III.'s  Statutes  of  Provisors,  1351, 
and  Praemunire,  1353,  by  their  prohibition  of  papal 
bulls  and  of  the  appointment  of  papal  nominees  to 
English  benefices,  may  be  accepted  as  the  real 
acknowledgment  of  Grosseteste's  political  work. 

"  I  confidently  assert  (wrote  Matthew  Paris)  that 
his  virtues  pleased  God  more  than  his  failings  dis- 
pleased Him." 


Simon    of   Montfort    and    the 
English    Parliament 

1258-1265 


AUTHORITIES:  Matthew  Paris ;  William  of  Rishanger; 
Thomas  of  Wykes  ;  Adam  of  Marsh  —  Monumenta 
Frascescana,  Burton  Annals.  Annales Monastici ;  Robert 
of  Gloucester — Royal  Letters  of  Henry  ///.(Rolls  Series); 
Political  Songs  (Camden  Society,  1839)  ;  Chronicle  of 
Melrose  ;  Stubbs — Constitutional  History,  vol.  ii ;  and 
Select  Charters;  W.  H.  Blaauw— The  Barons'  War-, 
Dr.  Pauli — Simon  of  Montfort  (translated  by  Una  M. 
Goodwin)  ;  G.  W.  Prothero — Simon  of  Montfort ;  Dr. 
Shirley  in  Quarterly  Review,  cxix.  57. 


SIMON  OF  MONTFORT  AND 
THE  ENGLISH  PARLIAMENT 

1258-1265 

IN  the  year  of  our  Lord  1238,  which  was  the 
twenty-second  of  his  reign,  King  Henry 
held  his  court  in  London  at  Westminster, 
and  there  on  the  day  after  Epiphany,  which 
was  a  Thursday,  Simon  de  Montfort  solemnly  es- 
poused Eleanor,  daughter  of  King  John,  sister  of 
Henry  III.,  and  widow  of  William  Marshall,  Earl  of 
Pembroke.  The  king  himself  gave  away  the  bride 
to  the  said  Simon,  Earl  of  Leicester,  who  received 
her  gratefully  by  reason  of  his  disinterested  love  for 
her,  her  own  beauty,  the  rich  honours  that  were 
attached  to  her,  and  the  distinguished  and  royal 
descent  of  the  lady,  for  she  was  the  legitimate 
daughter  of  a  king  and  queen,  and  furthermore  was 
sister  of  a  king,  of  an  empress  (the  wife  of  Frederic 
II.),  and  of  a  queen  (Joan,  wife  of  Alexander  II.  of 
Scotland).  Our  lord  the  pope,  too,  gave  him  a  dis- 
pensation to  marry  this  noble  lady." 

Thus  Matthew  Paris,  when  Earl  Simon,  then  a 
man  about  thirty-seven,  and  "tall  and  handsome," 
enjoyed  the  royal  favour  and  stood  godfather  to  the 
infant  Prince  Edward.  Simon  had  only  done  homage 
as  Earl  of  Leicester  in  1232  ;  his  boyhood  was 
passed  in  France,  and  his  father  was  the  great 
soldier  who  led  the  French  crusade  against  the 
Albigenses.  Earl  Richard  of  Cornwall,  Henry's 

117 


n8          Leaders  of  the  People         [1258- 

brother — soon  to  become  King  of  the  Romans- 
objected  to  the  marriage,  regarding  it  as  one  more 
victory  for  the  foreigners  whom  Henry  nourished  at 
the  expense  of  England.  But  Simon  was  no  real 
alien.  His  grandmother  had  been  sister  and  heiress 
of  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  and  Simon's  French  training 
no  more  made  him  a  stranger  in  England  than  did 
Stephen  Langton's  years  of  study  in  Paris  and 
Rome  unfit  him  for  the  primacy  of  the  English 
Church. 

Henry's  favour  was  short-lived.  Earl  Simon 
made  friends  with  Earl  Richard  and  left  for  the 
crusades,  disgusted  with  the  king's  want  of  honesty. 
So  much  wisdom  did  he  show  in  Palestine,  and  so 
great  was  his  prowess,  that  Simon  might  have  stayed 
in  the  east  as  regent  for  the  young  King  of  Jeru- 
salem. But  he  had  work  to  do  in  England,  and 
came  home  with  Richard  in  1242. 

Here  against  all  the  disorder  of  misrule  and  the 
royal  and  papal  extortions  Simon  laboured  with  his 
friend  Bishop  Grosseteste,  and  he  is  conspicuous  at 
the  Parliament  of  Westminster  in  1244,  and  in 
drawing  up  the  great  protest  to  the  pope  a  year  later. 

Then  for  five  years  (1248-53)  Simon  was  in 
Gascony  contending  with  a  body  of  nobles  whom 
neither  Henry  II.  nor  Richard  I.  had  been  able  to 
make  good  subjects,  and  whose  only  object  in 
making  formal  acknowledgment  of  Henry  III.  was  to 
escape  the  rule  of  Louis  of  France.  Henry  gave 
Simon  neither  men  nor  money,  and  lent  a  willing 
ear  to  all  the  complaints  of  Simon's  enemies  in  Gas- 
cony  and  in  England.1  At  his  own  expense  the 

1  "  The  king-  acted  as  if  he  had  sent  him  abroad  simply  to  ruin  his 
fortunes  and  wreck  his  reputation." — Stubbs. 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  119 

Earl  of  Leicester  saved  Gascony  for  the  English 
crown,  and  brought  peace  and  law  and  trade  to  that 
province.  Henry's  return  was  to  make  Simon 
answer  trumped-up  charges  of  robbery,  cruelty  and 
treason  brought  by  Gascons  in  1252.  The  charges 
were  not  proved,  although  Henry  sent  his  own 
commissioner  to  Gascony  to  make  enquiry.  Earl 
Richard  and  other  nobles  who  knew  the  country 
were  convinced  of  Simon's  justice,  and  Simon,  who 
was  in  England  trying  to  raise  supplies,  turned 
sharply  on  the  king,  reminding  him  of  unfulfilled 
promises.  "  Keep  thy  agreement  with  me,"  he  went 
on,  "  or  pay  me  the  money  I  have  spent  in  thy  ser- 
vice ;  for  it  is  well  known  I  have  impoverished  my 
earldom  beyond  recovery  for  the  honour  of  the 
king."  "  There  is  no  shame  in  breaking  my  word  to 
a  traitor,"  the  king  answered  angrily.  At  this  Simon 
in  open  wrath  declared  the  king  a  liar,  only  saved 
by  the  shelter  of  royalty  from  the  penalty  of  his 
speech.  "Call  thyself  a  Christian?"  said  the  earl. 
"  Dost  thou  ever  confess  thy  sins  ?  "  "  Yes,"  said  the 
king,  "  I  do."  "  Thy  confession  is  useless  without  re- 
pentance and  atonement."  said  the  earl.  The  king, 
more  angry  than  ever,  retorted,  "I  repent  of  one  thing, 
and  that  is  that  I  made  thee  an  earl  in  England,  to 
wax  fat  and  kick  against  me.  Get  thee  to  Gascony, 
thou  who  lovest  strife,  and  take  thy  fill  there  and 
meet  thy  father's  fate."  "  I  go  willingly,  my  lord," 
came  the  answer.  "  And,  ungrateful  as  thou  art,  I 
will  not  return  till  I  have  made  these  rebels  thy  sub- 
jects and  thy  enemies  thy  footstool." 

Simon  returned  to  Gascony,  and  though  Henry 
again  undermined  his  authority,  he  kept  his  word, 
only  giving  up  his  command  when  the  work  was  done. 


I2o  Leaders  of  the  People       [1258- 

Adam  of  Marsh,  a  Franciscan  friar,  the  friend 
and  correspondent  of  Grosseteste,  often  writes  to 
Simon  in  those  days,  encouraging  and  advising  him. 
"  Better  is  patience  in  a  man  than  force, "says  Adam, 
"and  better  he  who  rules  his  own  passions  than  he 
who  storms  a  city."  He  prays  this  strong  upright 
soldier-statesman  to  find  comfort  in  the  frequent 
reading  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  "  breaking  through 
as  far  as  you  can  the  cares  and  distractions  of  storm 
and  trouble,"  and  recommends  the  29th,  $oth  and 
3ist  chapters  of  the  book  of  Job,  "  together  with  the 
delightful  commentaries  of  St.  Gregory." 

Once  more  back  in  England,  the  time  soon  came 
when  Simon  was  the  recognised  leader  of  the  barons 
in  their  struggle  with  the  king.  And  this  leadership 
gave  England  its  first  representative  parliament. 

Henry  was  in  greater  financial  difficulties  than 
ever  in  1257.  The  mad  scheme  of  accepting  the 
crown  of  Sicily  for  his  second  son  Edmund  from  the 
pope,  on  condition  that  the  cost  of  driving  out  Man- 
fred, the  Emperor  Frederick's  son,  undertaken  by 
the  pope,  was  to  be  paid  for  by  England,  had  been 
adopted  by  Henry  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of 
bishops  and  nobles.  Henry  pledged  his  kingdom 
with  the  pope  as  security  for  the  expenditure  in 
Sicily,1  and  at  last  in  the  parliament  of  1257  had  to 
confess  his  indebtedness.  Fourteen  thousand  marks 
were  owing  to  Pope  Alexander,  and  this  wretched 
debt,  in  addition  to  the  general  contempt  for  law  and 
justice  by  the  king's  judges,  sheriffs  and  foreign 
favourites,  drove  matters  to  a  climax.  The  wet 
summer  of  1257,  followed  by  a  failure  at  harvest, 
brought  famine  in  the  winter. 

1  Matthew  Paris. 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  121 

The  barons  insisted  that  the  time  had  come  for 
constitutional  amendment.  "  The  king's  mistakes 
call  for  special  treatment,"  said  Richard,  Earl  of 
Gloucester,  at  a  parliament  early  in  1258,  and  Simon, 
closely  related  to  the  royal  house  as  he  was,  agreed. 
The  swarm  of  royal  parasites  from  Poitou  raised 
objections  to  any  interference  with  Henry's  preroga- 
tive, but  were  swept  aside.  "If  the  king  can't  do 
without  us  in  war  he  must  listen  to  us  in  peace. 
And  what  sort  of  peace  is  this  when  the  king  is  led 
astray  by  bad  counsellors  and  the  land  is  filled  with 
foreign  tyrants  who  grind  down  native-born  English- 
men ?  "  So  the  barons  argued.1 

To  Henry's  threat,  "  I  will  send  reapers  and  reap 
your  fields  for  you,"  Hugh  Bigod  of  Norfolk  had 
retorted  briskly,  "  And  I  will  send  you  back  the 
heads  of  your  reapers." 

Parliament  met  again  in  June  that  year  at  Oxford 
—the  "  Mad  Parliament "  it  was  called — and  the 

1  Rishanger,   the   chronicler  for   St.  Albans,  puts  the   case  for  the 
national  party  : — 

"The  king  that  tries  without  advice  to  seek  his  people's  weal 
Must  often  fail,  he  cannot  know  the  wants  and  woes  they  feel. 
The  Parliament  must  tell  the  king  how  he  may  serve  them  best, 
And  he  must  see  their  wants  fulfilled  and  injuries  redressed. 
A  king  should  seek  his  people's  good  and  not  his  own  sweet  will, 
Nor  think  himself  a  slave  because  men  hold  him  back  from  ill. 

For  they  that  keep  the  king  from  sin  serve  him  the  best  of  all, 

Making  him  free  that  else  would  be  to  sin  a  wretched  thrall. 

True  king  is  he,  and  truly  free,  who  rules  himself  aright, 

And  chooses  freely  what  he  knows  will  ease  his  people's  plight. 

Think  not  it  is  the  king's  goodwill  that  makes  the  law  to  be, 

For  law  is  steadfast,  and  a  king  has  no  stability. 

No  !  law  stands  high  above  the  king,  for  law  is  that  true  light 

Without  whose  ray  the  king  would  stray  and  wander  from  the  right. 

When  a  king  strays  he  ought  to  be  called  back  into  the  way 

By  those  he  rules,  who  lawfully  his  will  may  disobey 

Until  he  seeks  the  path,  but  when  his  wandering  is  o'er, 

They  ought  to  help  and  succour  him  and  love  him  as  before." 

(Translated  by  F.  York  Powell.) 


122          Leaders  of  the  People         [1258- 

barons  came  fully  armed,  for  civil  war  seemed  immi- 
nent. But  the  barons  led  by  Richard  of  Gloucester 
and  Earl  Simon  carried  all  before  them  and  the  war 
was  postponed  for  five  years. 

The  work  of  this  parliament,  well  known  as  the 
Provisions  of  Oxford,  was  one  more  attempt  to  get 
the  Great  Charter  honestly  observed.  Under  this 
constitution  : — 

The  king  was  to  have  a  standing  council  of  fifteen, 
by  whose  advice  he  was  to  act,  and  to  whom  the 
justiciar,  chancellor  and  treasurer  were  to  be  account- 
able. 

Parliament  was  to  meet  three  times  a  year — 
February,  June  and  October.  Four  knights  were 
to  be  chosen  by  the  king's  lesser  freehold  tenant- 
knights  in  each  county. 

To  save  expense  twelve  commissioners  were  to  be 
chosen  to  represent  the  baronage — "  and  the  com- 
monalty shall  hold  as  established  that  which  these 
twelve  shall  do."1  The  fifteen  counsellors  consisted 
of  six  of  the  king's  party,  and  nine  of  the  barons' — 
the  most  conspicuous  of  the  latter  were  Simon  of 
Montfort,  Richard  of  Gloucester,  and  Bishop  Canti- 
lupe,  of  Worcester. 

Then  the  oath  was  taken,  "  that  neither  for  life 
nor  death,  for  hatred  or  love,  or  for  any  cause  what- 
ever, would  they  be  bent  or  weakened  in  their 

1  "  The  new  form  of  government  bears  evidence  of  its  origin  ;  it  is 
intended  rather  to  fetter  the  king  than  to  extend  or  develop  the  action 
of  the  community  at  large.  The  baronial  council  clearly  regards  itself 
as  competent  to  act  on  behalf  of  all  the  estates  of  the  realm,  and  the 
expedient  of  reducing  the  national  deliberations  to  three  sessions  of 
select  committees,  betrays  a  desire  to  abridge  the  frequent  and  some- 
what irksome  duty  of  attendance  in  parliament  rather  than  to  share  the 
central  legislative  and  deliberative  power  with  the  whole  body  of  the 
people.  It  must  however  be  remembered  that  the  scheme  makes  a  very 
indistinct  claim  to  the  character  of  a  final  arrangement." — Stubbs. 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  123 

purpose  to  regain  praiseworthy  laws,  and  to  cleanse 
the  kingdom  from  foreigners." 

Henry  and  Prince  Edward,  his  eldest  son,  took  the 
oath  willingly  enough — though  the  latter  soon  began 
"  to  draw  back  from  it  so  far  as  he  could."  The 
king's  half-brothers  and  the  rest  of  the  aliens  not  only 
refused  the  oath,  but  swore  that  as  long  as  they  had 
breath  they  would  never  surrender  their  castles, 
revenues,  or  wardships.1  Simon,  who  on  the 
ground  of  his  foreign  birth  had  at  once  yielded  his 
castles  of  Kenilworth  and  Odiham,  without  recom- 
pense, turned  to  William  de  Valence — who  was 
blustering  more  than  the  rest — and  said  sharply, 
"  To  a  certainty  you  shall  either  surrender  your 
castles  or  lose  your  head."  The  barons  made  it 
plain  that  they  were  in  agreement  with  this,  and 
then  were  the  Poitevins  afraid,  not  knowing  what  to 
do ;  "  for  if  they  hid  themselves  in  their  castles  they 
would  be  starved  out ;  for  all  the  people  would 
besiege  them  and  utterly  destroy  their  castles."  The 
aliens  fled  to  the  continent,  and  the  new  constitution 
was  proclaimed  in  every  county — in  Latin,  French, 
and  English.2 

Twenty  years  had  passed  since  Henry  had  blessed 
Simon's  marriage  with  his  sister  Eleanor,  and  Simon 
had  stood  godfather  to  Prince  Edward,  and  now 
after  the  Parliament  at  Oxford,  meeting  the  Earl  of 
Leicester  in  the  Bishop  of  Durham's  palace  on  the 
Thames  bank,  the  king  cannot  conceal  his  fear  of 

1  A  board  of  twenty-four — half  chosen  by  the  king  and  half  by  the 
barons — had  laid  a  body  of  resolutions  before  the  Oxford   Parliament, 
and  the  first  of  these  resolutions  declared  that  all  castles  and  estates 
alienated  from  the  crown  should  be  at  once  resumed. 

2  "  The  first  time,  as  far  as  we  know,  English  was  used  in  any  public 
document." — Blaauw,  The  Barons    War. 


124          Leaders  of  the  People          [1258- 

the  one  man  who  held  up  the  good  cause — ''like  a 
pillar  that  cannot  be  moved."  The  king  had  taken 
refuge  from  a  thunderstorm,  and  to  Simon's  assurance 
that  the  storm  was  passing,  and  was  no  longer  to  be 
feared,  answered  grimly,  "  I  fear  thunder  and 
lightning  a  good  deal,  Lord  Simon,  but  by  the 
Head  of  God,  I  fear  you  more  than  all  the  thunder 
and  lightning  in  the  world." 

"  Everyone  suspected  that  these  astounding  words 
broke  from  the  king  because  the  Earl  of  Leicester 
manfully  and  boldly  persevered  in  carrying  out  the 
provisions,  compelling  the  king  and  all  the  enemies 
of  these  provisions  to  assent  to  them,  and  utterly 
banishing  his  brothers,  who  were  corrupting  the 
whole  kingdom."  (Matthew  Paris.) 

Manfully  as  the  great  earl  might  strive,  he  could 
not  accomplish  the  carrying  out  of  the  Provisions  of 
Oxford.  Henry  was  quickly  at  his  old  work, 
obtaining  from  Rome  a  dispensation  from  his  old 
promises  on  the  ground  they  had  been  obtained  by 
compulsion,  and  bringing  back  his  foreign  supporters. 
The  barons  neither  held  together  nor  made  any 
serious  effort  to  promote  good  government. 

Richard  of  Gloucester,  jealous  of  Simon,  fell  away 
from  the  national  cause  before  his  death  in  I262.1 

1  "  End,  O  Earl  of  Gloster,  what  thou  hast  begun  ! 
Save  thou  end  it  fitly,  we  are  all  undone. 
Play  the  man,  we  pray  thee,  as  thou  hast  promised, 
Cherish  steadfastly  the  cause  of  which  thou  wast  the  head. 
He  that  takes  the  Lord's  work  up,  and  lays  it  down  again, 
Shamed  and  cursed  may  he  be,  and  all  shall  say  Amen. 

Earl  Simon,  thou  of  Montfort,  so  powerful  and  brave, 
Bring  up  thy  strong  companies  thy  country  now  to  save, 
Have  thou  no  fear  of  menaces  or  terrors  of  the  grave, 
Defend  with  might  the  nation's  cause,  naught  else  thine  own 
needs  crave." 

— Rishanger,  Political  Songs. 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  125 

Prince  Edward  stood  by  his  oath,  but  did  nothing 
to  prevent  the  break-up  of  the  provisional  govern- 
ment, and  soon  openly  supported  his  father. 

In  spite  of  all  this  the  Provisions,  modified  at 
•  Westminster  in  1259,  endured  for  five  years,  and 
then  it  seemed  as  if  nothing  could  save  the  country 
from  civil  war.  As  a  last  resource  appeal  was  made 
by  both  sides  to  King  Louis  of  France  to  arbitrate 
concerning  the  fulfilment  of  the  Provisions,  and  at 
Amiens,  in  January,  1264,  the  award  was  given. 
Louis  solemnly  gave  sentence  for  the  king  against 
the  barons,  entirely  annulling  the  Statutes  and  Pro- 
visions of  Oxford,  and  in  particular  declaring  the 
king  free  to  appoint  his  own  ministers,  councils,  and 
sheriffs,  and  to  employ  aliens.  But  by  the  award — 
the  mise — of  Amiens  the  earlier  charters  given  by 
the  crown  were  to  remain,  and  all  disputes  arising 
out  of  the  Parliament  of  Oxford  were  to  be  suppressed. 
Louis  gave  as  a  reason  for  annulling  the  provisions 
that  the  pope  had  already  annulled  them. 

The  appellants  had  turned  to  Louis  hoping  for 
peace.  The  award  was  the  signal  for  war.  Many 
of  the  bishops  and  barons  at  once  withdrew  from 
Simon,  who  answered  the  deserters  by  declaring, 
' '  Though  all  should  forsake  us,  I  and  my  four  sons 
will  fight  to  the  death  in  the  righteous  cause  I  have 
sworn  to  uphold,  to  the  honour  of  the  Church  and 
the  good  of  the  realm.  Many  lands  have  I  travelled, 
heathen  and  Christian,  but  nowhere  have  I  seen 
such  bad  faith  and  falsehood  as  in  England." 

London  was  enthusiastic  in  its  support  of  the 
barons,  and  the  Cinque  Ports,  the  scholars  of 
Oxford,  and  the  Dominican  and  Franciscan  friars 
were  all  on  the  side  of  reform.  Chief  among 


126          Leaders  of  the  People         [1258- 

Simon's  supporters  were  Bishop  Cantilupe,  of  Wor- 
cester, Gilbert,  the  young  Earl  of  Gloucester,  Hugh 
le  Despenser,  the  justiciar,  and  Roger  Bigod. 

War  began  in  March,  when  Prince  Edward 
captured  Gloucester,  joined  Henry  at  Oxford,  and 
then  seized  Nottingham  and  Northampton,  while 
Simon  and  the  citizens  of  London  attacked 
Rochester.  Henry  turned  south,  and  encamped  in 
full  force  near  Lewes. 

Again  Simon  laboured  for  peace,  and  in  his  own 
name  and  the  name  of  Gilbert  of  Gloucester,  the 
Bishops  of  Worcester  and  London  went  as  am- 
bassadors to  Henry.  Simon  offered  ,£30,000  to  the 
king  if  he  would  make  peace  and  keep  to  the  Pro- 
visions of  Oxford,  and  assured  him  that  he  had 
taken  up  arms  not  against  Henry  but  against  those 
who  were  "  not  only  our  enemies,  but  yours,  and 
those  of  the  whole  kingdom." 

The  king  treated  the  proposal  with  scorn,  and 
Prince  Edward  added  an  additional  message  of 
contempt. 

On  the  1 4th  of  May  the  battle  of  Lewes  was 
fought  and  won  by  Simon,  "through  a  singular  con- 
junction of  skill  and  craft  on  the  one  side,  and  rash- 
ness and  panic  on  the  other."1 

The  Earl  of  Leicester  went  into  the  battle  fighting 
for  his  country  and  his  oath,  and  with  the  exhorta- 
tion to  his  men  "to  pray  God,  if  this  our  undertaking 
be  pleasing  in  His  sight,  to  give  us  might  to  fulfil 
the  same,  serving  Him  as  good  knights." 

The  stout  old  Bishop  of  Worcester  blessed  the 
troops,  "  who  had  among  them  all  but  one  faith,  one 
will  in  all  things,  one  love  towards  God  and  their 

1  Stubbs. 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  127 

neighbour,  so  that  they  feared  neither  to  offend  the 
king  nor  even  to  die  for  the  sake  of  justice,  rather 
than  violate  their  oaths."  (Matthew  of  Westminster.) 

At  the  end  of  the  day  the  defeat  of  the  royalists 
was  complete,  and  the  king,  Prince  Edward  and  his 
kinsmen  were  prisoners. 

Then  peace  was  made,  Henry  once  more  swearing 
to  keep  the  charters  and  articles  of  Oxford,  to  em- 
ploy no  aliens,  to  submit  the  Provisions  to  arbitra- 
tion again,  to  live  thriftily  till  his  debts  were  paid, 
and  to  give  his  son  Edward  and  his  nephew  Henry 
as  hostages  for  good  behaviour  till  a  permanent 
reform  in  the  constitution  was  made.  Early  in  June 
these  terms  of  peace  were  proclaimed  in  London,  to 
the  general  satisfaction,  and  on  all  sides  the  people 
shouted  their  thankfulness  to  Simon. 

God's  blessing1  on  Earl  Simon,  his  sons  and  followers  light ! 
Who  put  their  lives  in  jeopardy  and  fought  a  desperate  fight, 
Because   their   hearts   were    moved    to   hear   their    English 

brethren  groan 
Beneath   the   hard    taskmasters'   rods,    making   a   grievous 

moan, 

Like  Israel  under  Pharaoh's  yoke,  in  thraldom  and  in  dread, 
Their  freedom  gone,  their  lives  scarce  spared,  so  evilly  they 

sped. 
But  at  the  last  the  Lord  looked  down  and  saw   His  people's 

pain, 

And  sent  a  second  Mattathias  to  break  their  bonds  in  twain  ; 
Who  with  his  sons  so  full  of  zeal  for  the  law  and  for  the  right, 
Will  never  flinch  a  single  inch  before  the  tyrant's  might. 
To  Simon's  faith  and  faithfulness  alone  our  peace  we  owe, 
He  raised  the  weak  and  hopeless  and  made  the  proud  to  bow, 
He  set  the  realm  at  one  again  and  brought  the  mighty  low.1 

And  now  in  the  summer  of  1264  Earl  Simon  was 
to  show  what  he  could  do  for  England,  for  the 

1  "The  Song  of  Lewes  "—Political  Songs. 


128          Leaders  of  the  People         [1258- 

victory  of  Lewes  had  placed  power  in  his  hands,  and 
he  stood  indisputably  the  foremost  man  in  the  realm. 
For  one  short  year  his  counsel  was  to  guide  the 
destinies  of  England  and  to  make  that  year  memor- 
able for  all  time  by  the  creation  of  the  first  repre- 
sentative Parliament. 

A  new  scheme  of  government  was  at  once  drawn 
up.  Three  electors  chosen  by  the  barons  were  to 
appoint  a  council  of  nine  for  the  guidance  of  the 
king,  and  Simon  of  Montfort,  Gilbert  of  Gloucester, 
and  Stephen  Berksted,  Bishop  of  Chichester,  were 
speedily  chosen  as  the  three  electors.  Hugh  le 
Despenser  remained  justiciar,  and  Thomas  Canti- 
lupe,  the  bishop's  nephew,  became  chancellor.  (This 
Thomas  subsequently  became  Bishop  of  Hereford, 
died  in  Italy,  and  was  canonized.) 

Then  in  December  came  the  issue  of  writs  for 
Simon  of  Montfort's  famous  Full  Parliament  of  1265. 
Two  knights  are  to  be  returned  from  each  shire,  and 
for  the  first  time  from  each  city  and  borough  the 
burgesses  are  to  send  two  representatives.  Hitherto 
Parliament  had  consisted  of  barons  and  clergy,  and 
knights  sent  by  the  king's  tenants,  and  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  townspeople  was  unknown.  Simon's 
earlier  policy  at  Oxford  had  done  nothing  to  extend 
the  basis  of  government  or  create  a  national  respon- 
sibility for  the  laws.  "The  provisions  of  1258 
restricted,  the  constitutions  of  1264  extended  the 
limits  of  parliament.  .  .  .  Either  Simon's  views  of  a 
constitution  had  rapidly  developed,  or  the  influence 
which  had  checked  them  in  1258  were  removed. 
Anyhow,  he  had  had  genius  to  interpret  the  mind  of 
the  nation  and  to  anticipate  the  line  which  was  taken 
by  later  progress."  (Stubbs.) 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  129 

This  development  of  Simon's  views  may  fairly  be 
traced  to  his  close  and  intimate  connection  with  the 
Dominican  friars.1  Simon's  father,  the  warrior  of 
the  Albigensian  wars,  had  been  the  warm  friend  of 
St.  Dominic.  Simon  himself  was  equally  the  friend 
of  Bishop  Grosseteste,  the  champion  of  the  friars. 
As  far  back  as  1245  Simon  had  founded  a  Dominican 
priory  at  Leicester.  In  1263  he  had  been  present  at 
a  General  Chapter  of  the  Dominican  Order  in  Hoi- 
born,  London,  and  the  Parliament  of  Oxford  had 
met  in  a  Dominican  priory  in  that  city.  All  along 
the  friars  had  supported  the  popular  movement.2 

Now  the  peculiarity  of  the  Dominican  Order  of 
Friars  is  its  representative  form  of  government. 
Each  priory  sends  two  representatives  to  its  provin- 
cial chapter,  and  each  province  sends  two  representa- 
tives to  the  general  chapter  of  the  order. 

Simon  of  Montfort,  when  the  opportunity  came  to 
him  for  striking  out  a  reform  in  the  English  Parlia- 
ment, adopted  the  plan  which  he  had  studied  and 
seen  at  work  amongst  the  Preaching  Friars.  "  The 
idea  of  representative  government  had  ripened  in  his 
hand,"  and  his  genius  interpreted  the  mind  of  the 
nation.  In  spite  of  all  the  scorn  that  has  been 
poured  on  popular  elections  and  the  Houses  of 
Parliament,  in  spite  of  all  the  imperfections  that 
necessarily  are  attached  to  any  constitutional  system 
devised  by  the  wit  of  man,  the  idea  of  representative 
government  has  become  the  inspiration  of  the 
nations  of  the  world.  The  failings  of  democracy  are 

1  I  am  indebted  to  my  friend  Fr.  Bede  Jarrett,  O.P.,  for  this  interest- 
ing and,  I  believe,  hitherto  unpublished  sug-gestion. 

2  It  was  to  a  Dominican  Convent  at  Montargis  that  Simon's  widow, 
the  Princess  Eleanor,  retired  after  the  fatal  battle  of  Evesham. 


130          Leaders  of  the  People         [1258- 

obvious,  the  weak  spots  in  popular  electoral  systems 
glaring  ;  but  mankind,  once  grasping  the  idea  of 
freedom  in  politics,  clamours  eagerly  for  responsi- 
bility in  law-making  and  the  administration  of  justice, 
and  refuses  to  rest  satisfied  under  any  despotism  or 
bureaucracy,  benevolent  or  malevolent.  Suppressed 
by  dictators,  perverted  by  demagogues,  abused  by 
the  unscrupulous  in  power,  there  still  seems  nothing 
better  in  politics  for  mankind  than  self-government. 
"  Better  is  he  who  rules  his  own  temper  than  he  who 
storms  a  city,  "wrote  Friar  Adam  of  Marsh  to  Simon 
of  Montfort.  "  Better  self-government  for  a  people 
than  world- wide  conquest,"  the  average  man  declares, 
and  the  opinion  slowly  moulds  the  destinies  of 
nations,  till  "  patriotism  "  becomes  the  word  for  good 
service  in  politics. 

The  verse  of  the  thirteenth  century  chronicler  : — 

The  king  that  tries  without  advice  to  seek  his  people's  will, 
Must  often  fail,  he  cannot  know  the  woes  and  wants  they 
feel, 

gets  re-expression  in  the  nineteenth  century  in  Abra- 
ham Lincoln's  :  "  Government  of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  for  the  people."  Always  threatened  by  the 
personal  ambition  of  man,  often  overthrown  when 
ambition  held  the  sword  of  power,  contemptible 
to  the  wise  and  prudent  because  of  the  simplicity  and 
innocence  of  ''the  people,"  denounced  as  dangerous 
by  the  professional  expert  in  bureaucracy  because  of 
the  ignorance  of  "  the  people,"  its  inadequacy  the 
common  theme  of  the  disappointed — representative 
government  survives  its  enemies,  defies  its  critics,  and 
with  its  blemishes  unconcealed,  finds  the  company  of 
its  lovers  ever  increasing  and  recruiting  in  its  behalf. 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  131 

For  since  that  first  Full  Parliament  of  Earl  Simon's 
in  1265  it  has  never  been  possible  to  get  rid  of  the 
notion  that  representative  government  was  a  key  to 
the  portals  of  freedom ;  and  though  the  wider  the 
freedom  the  greater  the  responsibility,  to  the  credit 
of  the  race  at  all  times  men  and  women  have  pressed 
forward,  not  rejecting  responsibility. 

Simon's  parliament  sat  from  January  to  March. 
Its  chief  business  was  the  confirmation  of  the  treaty 
of  peace  at  Lewes,  and  Henry  swore  as  usual  to 
maintain  the  new  constitution,  the  charters  and  pro- 
visions. The  government  was  short-lived.  Danger 
from  France,  where  the  queen  and  Archbishop  Boni- 
face of  Canterbury  and  all  Henry's  alien  courtiers 
planned  invasion  with  an  army  collected  in  Holland, 
had  passed  away  at  the  close  of  the  previous  summer. 
There  had  been  a  great  muster  of  troops  for  national 
defence  near  Dover,  bad  weather  had  incapacitated 
the  queen's  fleet,  and  Louis  of  France  agreed  to 
negotiations  in  place  of  war.  The  Cinque  Ports 
manners  refused  a  landing  to  the  pope's  legate,  who 
was  ready  to  excommunicate  the  new  government, 
and  flung  his  papal  bull  in  the  sea.1 

Not  from  abroad  but  from  within  came  the  foes 
who  overthrew  Simon's  government  and  murdered 
the  great  statesman.  Earl  Gilbert,  of  Gloucester, 
like  his  father,  grew  jealous  of  Simon's  leadership, 
and  disputed  his  authority  as  to  the  ransom  of  some 
of  the  prisoners  of  Lewes,  and  Simon's  sons  added 

1  An  appeal  was  lodged  at  Rome  by  several  English  bishops  against 
the  threatened  excommunication,  but  the  papal  legate  himself  became 
pope  early  in  1265,  and,  as  Pope  Clement  V.,  was  the  strongest  enemy  of 
Simon  and  the  national  cause.  It  was  only  after  Evesham  and  the 
death  of  Simon  that  Clement  urged  a  wise  policy  of  mercy  on  Henry 
and  the  royalists. 


132          Leaders  of  the  People         [1258- 

fuel  to  the  flame  by  their  pride  and  overbearing 
insolence.  Roger  Mortimer  and  some  of  the  nobles 
of  the  Welsh  marches  rose  for  King  Henry  in  the 
spring  of  1265,  and  Gilbert  deserted  the  barons  for 
the  king.1  William  of  Valence  landed  in  South 
Wales  with  a  body  of  crossbowmen  in  May,  and 
when  Simon  reached  Hereford  to  put  down  the 
rebellion,  Prince  Edward,  who,  with  the  king,  had 
been  in  Simon's  custody,  made  his  escape  to  Morti- 
mer and  the  marches. 

Edward  quickly  raised  troops,  and  joined  Gilbert 
at  Ludlow,  where  he  took  an  oath  to  obey  the  laws 
and  charters  of  the  realm.  Simon,  in  some  danger 
of  being  cut  off  by  this  movement  on  his  rear,  sent 
word  to  his  second  son — Simon — to  go  to  Kenil- 
worth  and  join  him  at  Evesham,  and  then  turned 
back  from  Wales. 

The  younger  Simon  was  surprised  at  Kenilworth 
by  a  sudden  raid  by  Edward.  His  camp  was  broken 
up,  his  banners  taken,  and  he  was  driven  back  into 
the  castle.  Edward,  fully  aware  that  Earl  Simon 
had  only  a  small  force  with  him,  hurried  off  to 
Evesham  to  attack  him,  before  young  Simon  could 
rally  his  scattered  troops  and  come  to  his  father's 
help. 

On  the  morning  of  August  4th  Earl  Simon  halted 
at  Evesham,  and  at  the  king's  request,  for  Henry 
was  still  his  captive,  heard  mass  and  dined.  His 

1  "In  this  year,  while  Edward,  the  king's  son,  was  still  held  in  ward  in 
the  Castle  of  Hereford,  dissension  arose  between  Simon,  Earl  of 
Leicester,  and  Gilbert,  Earl  of  Gloucester.  .  .  . 

"  For  which  cause  the  old  friendship  was  turned  into  hate,  so  much  so 
that  neither  the  consideration  of  his  oath  nor  former  devotion  could 
thenceforth  pacify  the  said  Gilbert.  .  .  .  An  endeavour  was  made 
by  certain  prelates  to  restore  the  Earls  of  Leicester  and  Gloucester  to 
their  former  union  ;  but  they  could  in  no  wise  succeed." — W.  Rishanger. 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  133 

son's  army,  now  on  its  way,  halted  for  the  same 
purpose  at  Alcester.  "  He  was  now  only  ten  miles 
distant  and  the  junction  of  father  and  son  seemed 
secure."1  But  Prince  Edward  was  already  between 
them.  "  As  the  morning  broke  his  army  lay  across 
the  road  that  led  northward  from  Evesham  to 
Alcester.  Ere  three  hours  had  passed  the  corpse  of 
the  great  earl  lay  mangled  amid  a  ring  of  faithful 
knights,  and  the  '  murder  of  Evesham,  for  battle 
none  it  was,'  was  over." 

At  first  Simon  thought  the  advancing  army  was 
his  son's,  for  Edward  displayed  the  captured  banners 
of  Kenilworth,  but  when  he  saw  the  standards  of  the 
prince  and  of  Gloucester,  and  the  well-known  banner 
of  Mortimer,  the  truth  was  clear. 

"  By  the  arm  of  St.  James,"  cried  the  earl,  ''they 
come  on  skilfully,  for  they  have  turned  my  lessons 
against  me.  God  have  mercy  on  our  souls,  for  our 
bodies  are  theirs !  Though  if  Simon  were  to  come 
up  we  might  hope  yet."  He  turned  to  his  eldest 
son,  and  pointing  to  the  banner  of  Gloucester  said, 
"  See,  Henry,  what  your  pride  has  done." 

In  vain  Henry  urged  his  father  to  fly  while  escape 
was  possible.  "  I  had  as  lief  die  here  in  a  good 
cause  as  in  the  Holy  Land,"  said  the  earl,  and  the 
barons  and  knights  standing  round  were  equally 
resolute  to  fight  to  the  end — though  they  had  but 
two  men  to  every  seven  of  the  enemy.  The  good 
Bishop  of  Worcester  blessed  the  little  army  as  he 
had  done  at  Lewes,  and  then  the  battle  began.  The 
Welsh  footsoldiers  quickly  lost  heart  and  fled  from 
Simon  and  the  field,  and  the  barons  were  soon 
hemmed  in.  One  by  one  they  fell — Henry  of 

1  J.  R.  Green,  "  The  Ban  of  Kenilworth,"  Historical  Studies. 


134          Leaders  of  the  People         [1258- 

Montfort,  Hugh  le  Despenser,  the  wise  and  upright 
justiciar,  and  Simon  himself,  wounded  and  un- 
horsed, "  fought  on  to  the  last  like  a  giant  for  the 
liberties  of  England."  A  soldier  stabbed  him  in  the 
back  under  the  mail  he  wore,  and  then  he  was  borne 
down  and  slain,  overwhelmed  by  numbers  rather 
than  conquered.  "  So  a  death  full  of  honour  ended 
the  chivalry  and  prowess,  ennobled  by  so  many 
deeds  in  so  many  lands."  "  Thus  lamentably  fell 
the  flower  of  knighthood,  leaving  to  others  an 
example  of  steadfast  courage.  Who  can  prevent 
the  treachery  of  friends  ?  Those  who  had  eaten  his 
bread  had  raised  their  heels  against  him.  Those 
who  had  spoken  words  of  love  to  him  with  their  lips 
lied  in  their  throats,  for  their  hearts  were  not  right 
with  him,  and  they  betrayed  him  in  his  hour  of 
need."  (W.  Rishanger.) 

For  nearly  three  hours  the  unequal  battle  was 
fought,  in  the  midst  of  storm  and  darkness.  So 
dark  was  it  that  King  Henry,  who  had  been  forced 
to  remain  with  Simon's  knights,  had  difficulty  in 
saving  his  life,  and  was  actually  wounded  by  a  javelin 
before  he  was  recognized  by  Edward's  soldiers. 

The  monks  of  Evesham  carried  the  bodies  of 
some  of  the  barons  into  the  abbey  for  burial,  and 
after  horrible  mutilations  by  the  victors  the  remains 
of  the  great  earl  were  reverently  interred  by  the 
side  of  Hugh  le  Despenser,  before  the  high  altar. 

"Those  who  knew  Simon  praise  his  piety,  admire 
his  learning,  and  extol  his  prowess  as  a  knight  and 
skill  as  a  general.  They  tell  of  his  simple  fare  and 
plain  russet  dress,  bearing  witness  to  his  kindly 
speech  and  firm  friendship  to  all  good  men,  describe 
his  angry  scorn  for  liars  and  unjust  men,  and  marvel 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  135 

at  his  zeal  for  truth  and  right,  which  was  such  that 
neither  pleasure  nor  threats  nor  promises  could  turn 
him  aside  from  keeping  the  oath  he  swore  at  Oxford ; 
for  he  held  up  the  good  cause  '  like  a  pillar  that 
cannot  be  moved,  and  like  a  second  Josiah  esteemed 
righteousness  the  very  healing  of  his  soul.'  As  a 
statesman  he  wished  to  bind  the  king  to  rule  accord- 
ing to  law,  and  to  make  the  king's  ministers  respon- 
sible to  a  full  Parliament ;  and  though  he  did  not 
live  to  see  the  success  of  his  policy,  he  had 
pointed  out  the  way  by  which  future  statesmen 
might  bring  it  about."  (F.  York  Powell.) 

The  news  of  Simon's  death  was  received  with 
general  mourning  as  it  spread  over  the  land.  He 
was  acclaimed  by  the  people  as  a  saint  and  martyr, 
and  miracles  were  said  to  be  worked  by  his  relics.1 
The  Franciscan  friars  drew  up  a  service  in  his 
honour — "  consisting  of  lessons,  responses,  verses, 
hymns,  and  other  matter  appertaining  to  the  honour 
and  respect  due  to  a  martyr."2  But  the  pope  who 
had  excommunicated  Simon  was  not  likely  to  hear  of 
canonization,  and  "  as  long  as  Edward  lives  the  ser- 
vice compiled  in  Simon's  honour  cannot  gain  accept- 
ance to  be  chanted  within  the  church  of  God,  which 
was  hoped  for."3 

The  "  Lament  of  Earl  Simon,"4  compared  the 
mighty  statesman  with  Thomas  of  Canterbury  : 

1  "  The    triumph    over   Earl   Simon    had    been   a    triumph    over    the 
religious  sentiment  of  the  time,  and  religion  avenged  itself  in  its  own 
way.     Everywhere  the  earl's  death  was  viewed  as  a  martyrdom,  and 
monk  and  friar,  however  they  might  quarrel  on  other  points,  united  in 
praying  for  the  souls  of  the  dead  as  for  'soldiers  of  Christ."' — J.   R. 
Green,  "  The  Ban  of  Kenilworth,"  Historical  Studies. 

2  Chronicles  of  Melrose.  3  Ibid. 
4  Wright,  Political  Songs. 


136          Leaders  of  the  People         [1258- 

For  by  his  death  Earl  Simon  hath 

In  sooth  the  victory  won, 
Like  Canterbury's  martyr  he 

There  to  the  death  was  done. 
Thomas  the  good,  that  never  would 

Let  holy  church  be  tried  ; 
Like  him  he  fought,  and  flinching  not, 

The  good  earl  like  him  died. 

Refrain  : 

Now  low  there  lies  the  flower  of  price 
That  knew  so  much  of  war  ; 

The  Earl  Montfort,  whose  luckless  sort, 
The  land  shall  long  deplore. 

Death  did  they  face  to  keep  in  place 

Both  righteousness  and  peace  ; 
Wherefore  the  saint  from  sin  and  taint 

Shall  give  their  souls  release. 
They  faced  the  grave  that  they  might  save 

The  people  of  this  land  ; 
For  so  his  will  they  did  fulfill 

As  we  do  understand. 

Refrain. 

Sir  Simon  now,  that  knight  so  true, 

With  all  his  company, 
Are  gone  above  to  joy  and  love 

In  life  that  cannot  die  ; 
But  may  our  Lord  that  died  on  rood 

And  God  send  succour  yet 
To  them  that  lie  in  misery, 

Fast  in  hard  prison  set. 

Refrain. 

The  good  cause  for  which  Simon  had  fought 
might  well  have  seemed  lost,  when  Edward's 
knights  were  hacking  the  dead  body  of  the  great 
earl  to  pieces  at  Evesham.  But  it  was  not  exactly 
a  "  Royalist  victory,"  for  the  very  men  who  stood 
victors  over  the  mangled  corpse  of  Earl  Simon  were 


-1265]  Simon  of  Montfort  137 

men  as  resolute  as  he  was  to  enforce  the  Great 
Charter  and  its  results  against  the  king.1 

In  the  hour  of  triumph  Henry  struck  hard,  and  a 
mad  reaction  of  terror  ensued.  But  the  movement 
Simon  had  led  could  not  be  turned  back,  and  the 
very  savage  extravagance  of  the  royalist  party 
defeated  its  own  ends.  A  general  sentence  of 
disinheritance  against  all  who  had  fought  with 
Simon  drove  the  disinherited  barons  to  keep  up 
the  fight.  The  siege  of  Kenilworth,  where  Sir 
Henry  of  Hastings  defied  the  whole  royal  army, 
lasted  from  June  to  December,  1266,  and  was  only 
ended  by  Parliament  insisting  on  the  king  appoint- 
ing a  board  of  twelve,  who  made  a  just  award 
concerning  the  disinherited.  By  this  award,  called 
the  Ban  of  Kenilworth  : — 

The  royal  obligation  to  keep  the  charters  was 
required. 

The  acts  of  Simon  were  annulled,  and  the  full 
prerogatives  of  the  crown  declared. 

The  freedom  of  the  Church  was  demanded. 

Justice  was  to  be  done  according  to  the  laws  and 
customs  of  the  realm. 

The  adherents  of  Simon  were  to  be  punished  by 
fine  and  not  by  disinheritance,  so  that  the  king 
could  repay  those  who  had  served  him  faithfully 
without  giving  occasion  for  fresh  war. 

Simon  was  not  to  be  proclaimed  a  saint  (seeing 
he  died  under  the  excommunication  of  the  Church), 
and  those  who  spread  idle  tales  of  miracles  done  at 
his  tomb  were  to  be  punished. 

A  complete  indemnity  was  promised  to  all  who 
accepted  the  ban  within  forty  days. 

1  See  J.  R.  Green,  "Annals  of  Osney  and  Wykes,"  Historical  Studies. 


138          Leaders  of  the  People 

For  a  time  the  ban  was  rejected,  and  it  was  not  till 
the  summer  of  1 267  that  the  struggle  was  finally  over. 
Peace  was  assured  by  the  Parliament  of  Marlborough 
in  November,  1267,  which  re-enacted  the  Provisions 
of  Westminster  (1259)  as  a  statute. 

The  lasting  value  of  Simon's  work  was  seen  in 
1295,  when  Edward  I.  summoned  his  great  repre- 
sentative parliament  on  the  professed  principle  that 
"  that  which  touches  all  shall  be  approved  by  all." 
This  assembly,  by  that  very  principle,  served  as  "a 
pattern  for  all  future  assemblies  of  the  nation." 
(Stubbs.) 

Had  Simon  of  Montfort  received  canonization  by 
the  Church  he  would  surely  have  been  the  patron 
saint  of  all  workers  in  the  world  of  politics,  and  of  all 
who  honestly  and  courageously  engage  in  public 
work. 


Wat  Tyler  and  the  Peasant 
Revolt 

1381 


AUTHORITIES  :  Walsingham  ;  Knyghton  —  (Rolls 
Series);  Wright's  Political  Songs — (Rolls  Series); 
Froissart  ;  Professor  Oman  —  Great  Revolt  of  1381, 
containing  translation  of  a  chronicle  of  the  rising  in  the 
Stow  MSS.,  first  published  in  English  Historical  Review, 
1895  ;  Andre"  Re"ville — Le  Soulevement  des  Travailleurs 
(1898)  ;  Dr.  G.  Kriehn  —  American  Review,  1902  ; 
Edgar  Powell  —  Rising  of  1381  in  East  Anglia\  Dr. 
James  Gairdner — Lollardy  and  the  Reformation  ;  G.  M. 
Trevelyan — England  in  the  Age  of  Wy  cliff  \  J.  Clayton 
—  Wat  Tyler  and  the  Great  Uprising. 


KING    RICHARD    II. 

(From  the  Panel  Painting  in  the  Sanctuary  at  Westminster  Abbey.) 


WAT  TYLER  AND  THE 
PEASANT  REVOLT 

1381 


1 


Peasant  Revolt  of  1381,  led  by  Wat 
Tyler,  was  not  only  the  first  great  national 
movement  towards  democracy,  it  was  the 
first  uprising  of  the  English  people  in 
opposition  to  all  their  hitherto  recognised  rulers  in 
Church  and  State,  and  it  was  the  first  outburst  in 
this  land  against  social  injustice.1 

The  Black  Death  in  1349  and  the  pestilence  that 
ravaged  the  country  in  1361  and  1369  upset  the  old 
feudal  order.  The  land  was  in  many  places  utterly 
bereft  of  labour,  and  neither  king  nor  parliament 
could  restore  the  former  state  of  things.  Land- 
owners, driven  by  the  scarcity  of  labour,  went  in  for 
sheep  farming  in  place  of  agriculture,  and  were  com- 
pelled to  offer  an  increase  of  wages  in  spite  of  the 
Statutes  of  Labourers  (1351-1353)  which  expressly 
forbade  the  same  : — 

"  Every  man  or  woman  of  whatsoever  condition, 
free  or  bond,  able  in  body,  and  within  the  age  of 
three-score  years,  and  not  having  of  his  own  whereof 
he  may  live,  nor  land  of  his  own  about  the  tillage  of 
which  he  may  occupy  himself,  and  not  serving  any 
other,  shall  be  bound  to  serve  the  employer  who 

1  "  The  project  was  clearly  to  set  up  a  new  order  of  thing's  founded  on 
social  equality — a  theory  which  in  the  whole  history  of  the  Middle  Ages 
appears  for  the  first  time  in  connection  with  this  movement." — Gairdner. 

141 


142          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

shall  require  him  to  do  so,  and  take  only  the  wages 
which  were  accustomed  to  be  taken  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood two  years  before  the  pestilence." 

This  act  remained  the  law  until  the  fifth  year  of 
Elizabeth. 

"Free"  labourers,  landless  men  but  not  serfs, 
wandered  away  to  the  towns  or  turned  outlaws  in 
the  forests.  Serfs — only  a  small  number  of  the 
population,  for  the  Church  had  always  recommended 
their  liberation,  even  while  abbots  and  priors  retained 
them  on  Church  estates,  and  Edward  III.  had  en- 
couraged granting  freedom  in  return  for  payment  in 
money — escaped  to  those  incorporated  towns  that 
promised  freedom  after  eighteen  months'  residence. 
Villeins  and  lesser  tenants  commuted  the  service  due 
from  them  to  their  landlords  by  money  payments, 
and  so  began  the  leasehold  system  of  land  tenure. 

For  thirty  years  preceding  the  Peasant  Revolt 
the  social  changes  had  bred  discontent,  and  discon- 
tent rather  than  misery  is  always  the  parent  of 
revolt. 

An  early  statute  of  Richard  II.,  framed  for  the 
perpetual  bondage  of  the  serfs,  heightened  the  dis- 
content. 

"  No  bondman  or  bondwoman  shall  place  their 
children  at  school,  as  has  been  done,  so  as  to  advance 
their  children  in  the  world  by  their  going  into  the 
Church." 

This  same  act  made  equal  prohibition  against 
apprenticeship  in  the  town. 

The  free  labourer  had  his  grievance  against  the 
Statute  of  Labourers.  Villeins  and  cottar  tenants 
had  no  sure  protection  against  being  compelled  to 
give  labour  service  to  their  lords ;  and  they,  with 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  143 

the  freehold  yeomen  and  the  town  workmen  and 
shopkeepers,  hated  the  heavy  taxation,  the  oppres- 
sive market  tolls  and  the  general  misgovernment. 

To  unite  all  these  forces  of  social  discontent  into 
one  great  army,  which  should  destroy  the  oppression 
and  establish  freedom  and  brotherhood,  was  the  work 
John  Ball — an  itinerant  priest  who  came  at  first 
from  St.  Mary's  at  York,  and  then  made  Colchester 
the  centre  of  his  journeyings — devoted  himself  to  for 
twenty  years. 

Ball  preached  a  social  revolution,  and  his  gospel 
was  that  all  men  were  brothers,  and  that  serfdom  and 
lordship  were  incompatible  with  brotherhood.  In 
our  times  such  teaching  is  common  enough,  but  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  with  its  sumptuary  laws  and 
its  feudal  ranks,  only  in  religion  was  this  principle 
accepted.1  John  Ball  became  the  moving  spirit  in 
the  agitation  set  on  foot  by  his  teaching.  He  had 
his  colleagues  and  lieutenants,  John  Wraw  in  Suffolk 
and  Jack  Straw  in  Essex — both  priests  like  himself 
— William  Grindcobbe  in  Hertford  and  Geoffrey 
Litster  in  Norfolk.  The  peasants  were  organised 
into  clubs,  and  letters  were  sent  by  Ball  far  and  wide 
to  stir  up  revolt.  In  Kent  and  the  eastern  counties 
lay  the  main  strength  of  the  revolutionaries — it  was 
in  Kent  that  Ball  was  particularly  active  just  before 
the  rising — but  Sussex,  Hampshire,  Lincolnshire, 
Warwickshire,  Yorkshire  and  Somerset  were  all 
affected,  so  grave  and  so  general  was  the  dissatisfac- 
tion, and  so  hopeful  to  the  labouring  people  was  the 
message  delivered  by  John  Ball. 

1  It  may  be  said  that  to-day  the  idea  of  political  and  social  equality  is 
generally  accepted  and  that  of  brotherhood  denied.  In  the  fourteenth 
century  brotherhood  was  esteemed,  but  equality  was  a  strange,  in- 
truding notion. 


144          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

Of  course  Ball  did  not  escape  censure  and  the 
penalty  of  law  during  his  missionary  years.  He 
was  excommunicated  and  cast  into  prison  by  three 
Archbishops  of  Canterbury,  I  slip,  Simon  Langham, 
and  Simon  Sudbury,  for  teaching  "  errors,  schisms, 
and  scandals  against  the  popes,  archbishops,  bishops, 
and  clergy,"  and  he  was  only  released  from  prison, 
from  Archbishop  Sudbury 's  gaol  at  Maidstone,  by 
the  rough  hands  of  the  men  of  Kent  when  the  rising 
had  begun.  The  "  errors  "  of  John  Ball  were  civil  and 
social  rather  than  theological.  The  notion  that  Ball 
and  his  fellow  socialists  of  the  fourteenth  century  were 
mixed  up  with  Wycliff  and  the  Lollards  has  really  no 
foundation  in  fact.1  Wycliff  s  unorthodox  views  on 
the  sacraments  and  his  attacks  on  the  habits  of  the 
clergy  were  of  no  interest  to  the  social  revolutionists, 
and  John  of  Gaunt,  the  steady  friend  of  Wycliff, 
was  hated  above  all  other  men  in  the  realm  by  the 
leaders  of  the  revolt.  Wycliff  expressed  as  little 
sympathy  with  the  Peasant  Revolt  of  his  day  as 
Luther  later  in  Germany  did  with  the  Peasant  War, 
or  Cranmer  with  the  Norfolk  rising  under  Ket  in 

1549- 
John  Ball's  sermons  were  all  on  one  text — "  In 

the  beginning  of  the  world  there  were  no  bondmen, 
all  men  were  created  equal.  Servitude  of  man  to 
man  is  contrary  to  God's  will."  He  declared  that 
"  things  will  never  go  well  in  England  so  long  as 
goods  are  not  kept  in  common,  and  so  long  as  there 

1  "  The  bias  of  Wyclif  in  theory  and  practice  is  secular,  and  aristo- 
cratic, and  royalist :  it  is  not  really  socialistic  or  politically  revolu- 
tionary."— Figgis,  Studies  of  Political  Thought.  Nevertheless,  many 
writers  have  tried  to  discredit  Lollardy  by  associating  it  with  social 
revolt,  just  as  others  have  tried  to  discredit  John  Ball  by  making  him  out 
a  "  heretic,"  and  a  follower  of  Wycliff. 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  145 

are  villeins  and  gentlefolks."  He  harped  on  the 
social  inequalities  of  his  age,  quoting  freely  from 
Langland's  Piers  the  Plowman,  and  enlarging  on 
the  famous  couplet  : 

When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman  ? 

As  years  went  by  and  the  time  grew  ripe  for 
revolt,  there  is  a  definite  call  to  rise  in  Ball's  letters  and 
speeches.  "Let  us  go  to  the  king,  and  remonstrate 
with  him,"  he  declares,  "telling  him  we  must  have  it 
otherwise,  or  we  ourselves  shall  find  the  remedy." 

Richard  II.  was  but  eleven  when  he  came  to  the 
throne  in  1377.  "  He  is  young.  If  we  wait  on  him 
in  a  body,  all  those  who  come  under  the  name  of 
serf  or  are  held  in  bondage  will  follow  us,  in  the 
hope  of  being  free.  When  the  king  shall  see  us  we 
shall  obtain  a  favourable  answer,  or  we  must  then 
ourselves  seek  to  amend  our  condition." 

Some  of  the  rhymed  letters  Ball  sent  out,  bidding 
his  hearers  "  stand  together  manfully  in  the  truth," 
urge  preparation  for  the  coming  conflict : 

John  Ball  greeteth  you  all, 

And  doth  to  understand  he  hath  rung  your  bell. 
Now  with  right  and  might,  will  and  skill, 

God  speed  every  dell. 

John  the  miller  asketh  help  to  turn  his  mill  right : 

He  hath  ground  small,  small, 

The  King's  Son  of  Heaven  will  pay  for  it  all, 
Look  thy  mill  go  right,  with  its  four  sails  dight. 

With  right  and  with  might,  with  skill  and  with  will, 

And  let  the  post  stand  in  steadfastness, 
Let  right  help  might,  and  skill  go  before  will, 

Then  shall  our  mill  go  aright. 

But  if  might  go  before  right,  and  will  go  before  skill, 
This  is  our  mill  mis-a-dight. 


146          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

Beware  ere  ye  be  woe, 

Know  your  friend  from  your  foe, 

Take  enough  and  cry  '  Ho  ! ' 

And  do  well  and  better  and  flee  from  sin, 

And  seek  out  peace  and  dwell  therein, 

So  biddeth  John  Trueman  and  all  his  fellows. 

In  other  letters  he  greets  John  Nameless,  John 
the  Miller,  and  John  Carter,  and  bids  them  stand 
together  in  God's  name ;  and  bids  Piers  Plowman  "  go 
to  his  work  and  chastise  well  Hob  the  Robber  (Sir 
Robert  Hales,  the  king's  treasurer)  ;  and  take  with 
you  John  Trueman  and  all  his  fellows,  and  look  that 
you  choose  one  head  and  no  more." 

These  letters  and  the  preaching  did  their  work  ; 
the  peasants  were  organised  ;  men  of  marked  cour- 
age and  ability  were  found  in  various  counties  ;  and 
"  the  one  head  and  no  more  "  was  ready  in  Kent  to 
lead  the  army  of  revolt  to  the  king  when  the  signal 
should  be  given.  Litster,  Grindcobbe,  and  Wraw 
were  at  their  posts.  In  every  county  from  Somerset 
to  York  the  peasants  flocked  together,  "  some  armed 
with  clubs,  rusty  swords,  axes,  with  old  bows 
reddened  by  the  smoke  of  the  chimney  corner,  and 
odd  arrows  with  only  one  feather." 

John  Ball  had  rung  his  bell,  and  at  Whitsuntide, 
at  the  end  of  May,  1381,  came  the  great  uprising, 
the  "  Hurling-Time  of  the  Peasants."  The  fire  was 
all  ready  to  be  kindled,  and  a  poll-tax,  badly  ordered, 
set  the  country  ablaze. 

The  poll-tax  was  first  levied,  in  1377,  on  all  over 
fourteen  years  of  age.  Two  years  later  it  was 
graduated,  from  4d.  on  every  man  and  woman  of  the 
working  class  to  £6  135.  4d.  on  a  duke  or 
archbishop.  Even  this  with  a  further  tax  on  wool 
was  found  insufficient. 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  147 

So  early  in  1381  John  of  Gaunt  called  the  parlia- 
ment together  at  Northampton,  and  declared  that 
.£160,000  must  be  raised.  Parliament  refused  to 
find  more  than  .£100,000,  and  the  clergy,  owning  at 
that  time  one-third  of  the  land,  promised  £60,000. 
Again  a  poll-tax  was  demanded.  This  time  everybody 
over  fifteen  was  required  to  pay  is.,  but  in  districts 
where  wealthy  folks  lived  it  was  held  sufficient  that 
the  amount  collected  in  every  parish  averaged  is. 
per  head  ;  only  the  rich  were  not  to  pay  less  than 
£i  per  household,  nor  the  poor  less  than  8d.  In 
parishes  where  all  were  needy  the  full  shilling  was 
demanded  without  exception.  It  soon  appeared 
that  the  money  was  not  to  be  raised.  In  many 
parts  the  returns  as  to  the  population  liable  to  the 
tax  were  not  even  filled  in  with  any  attempt  at 
accuracy,  and  numbers  avoided  liability  by  leaving 
their  homes — to  escape  a  tribute,  which  to  the 
struggling  peasant  meant  ruin.  Of  the  £100,000 
required  only  £22,000  was  forthcoming. 

Then  one  John  Legge  undertook  to  supply  the 
deficit,  if  he  had  the  authority  of  the  crown  to  act 
as  special  commissioner  to  collect  the  tax.  The 
appointment  was  made,  with  the  result  that  the 
methods  of  the  tax-collectors  provoked  revolt,  and 
Legge  lost  his  life  over  the  business. 

The  rising  began  in  Essex,  when  the  villagers  of 
Fobbing,  Corringham,  and  Stanford-le-Hope  were 
summoned  to  meet  the  tax-commissioner  at  Brent- 
wood.  Unable  to  pay,  they  fell  upon  the  collectors 
and  killed  them.  The  government  met  this  assault 
by  sending  down  Chief  Justice  Belknap  to  punish 
the  offenders.  But  as  the  judge  merely  had  for 
escort  a  certain  number  of  legal  functionaries,  and  as 


148          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

the  blood  of  the  people  was  up,  Belknap  was  received 
with  open  contempt,  and,  forced  to  swear  on  the 
Bible  that  he  would  hold  no  other  session  in  the 
place,  was  glad  to  escape  from  the  town  without 
injury.  And  with  this  defiance  and  overpowering  of 
the  king's  officers  the  signal  was  given,  the  beacon  of 
revolt  well  lighted. 

It  was  June  2nd,  Whit  Sunday,  when  the  Chief 
Justice  was  driven  out  of  Brentwood  ;  two  days 
later  Kent  had  risen  at  Gravesend  and  Dartford. 

At  Gravesend  Sir  Simon  Burley,  the  friend  of 
Richard  II.,  seized  a  workman  in  the  town,  claiming 
him  as  a  bondsman  of  his  estate,  and  clapped  him  in 
Rochester  Castle,  refusing  to  hear  of  release  unless 
^300  was  paid. 

At  the  same  time  word  went  about  that  the  tax- 
collector  at  Dartford  was  insulting  the  women,  and 
that,  in  especial,  the  wife  and  daughter  of  one  John 
Tyler  had  been  abused  with  gross  indecency. 

Whereupon  this  John  Tyler,  "being  at  work  in 
the  same  town  tyling  of  an  house,  when  he  heard 
thereof,  caught  his  lathing  staff  in  his  hand,  and  ran 
reakinghome ;  where,  reasoning  with  the  collector,  who 
made  him  so  bold,  the  collector  answered  with  stout 
words,  and  strake  at  the  tyler ;  whereupon  the  tyler, 
avoiding  the  blow,  smote  the  collector  with  his  lath- 
ing staff,  so  that  the  brains  flew  out  of  his  head. 
Wherethrough  great  noise  arose  in  the  streets,  and 
the  poor  people  being  glad,  everyone  prepared  to 
support  the  said  John  Tyler."  l 

Robert  Cave,  a  master  baker  of  Dartford,  led  the 

1  Froissart  seems  to  be  mainly  responsible  for  the  belief  that  this 
John  Tyler  became  the  great  leader  of  the  movement,  confusing"  him 
with  Wat  Tyler,  of  Maidstone,  the  real  leader.  Several  writers  allege 
the  indecency  of  the  tax-collectors. 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  149 

people  straight  off  to  Rochester ;  and  the  castle 
having  been  stormed,  and  all  its  prisoners  released, 
Sir  John  Newton,  the  governor  of  the  castle,  was 
retained  in  safe  custody. 

And  now  the  time  had  come  for  good  generalship 
and  discipline  in  the  ranks,  if  the  fire  of  revolt  was 
to  burn  aright.  Accordingly  at  Maidstone,  on 
June  7th,  Wat  Tyler  is  chosen  captain  of  the  host ; 
and  proof  is  quickly  given  that  the  rising  is  not  for 
mob  rule  or  general  anarchy,  but  to  redress  positive 
and  intolerable  wrongs.  (Five  Tylers  are  mentioned 
in  the  records  of  the  Peasant  Revolt :  Wat  Tyler,  of 
Maidstone  ;  John  Tyler,  of  Dartford,  who  slays  the 
tax-collector,  and  is  not  heard  of  again;  Walter  Tyler, 
of  Essex  ;  and  two  Tylers  of  the  City  of  London — 
William,  of  Stone  Street,  and  Simon,  of  Cripplegate.) 

In  every  respect  was  this  Wat  Tyler  a  man  of 
remarkable  gifts.  Chosen  as  leader  by  the  voice 
of  his  neighbours  in  Kent,  his  authority  is  at  once 
obeyed  without  dispute,  and  his  influence  is  seen  to 
extend  beyond  the  borders  of  his  own  county. 
Jack  Straw  acts  as  his  lieutenant ;  John  Wraw,  of 
Suffolk,  and  William  Grindcobbe,  of  St.  Albans, 
come  to  him  for  advice  ;  and  it  is  not  till  Tyler 
moves  on  London  with  his  army  that  the  rising 
becomes  national.  He  is  plainly  marked  out  as  a 
great  leader  of  masses  of  men.  Skilful,  courageous, 
humane,  Wat  Tyler  is  proved  to  be  ;  firm,  clear- 
headed, downright  in  manner,  and  yet  large-hearted, 
jovial  and  brotherly — equally  at  home  with  king  or 
beggar.  There  is  nothing  of  the  fanatical  doctrinaire 
about  this  first  great  leader  of  the  English  people. 
He  could  order  the  execution  of  "  traitors,"  but 
he  is  not  the  man  for  bloodshed  in  England  if  the 


150          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

revolution  he  and  John  Ball  aimed  at  can  be  accom- 
plished by  peaceful  means.  After  more  than  500 
years  the  reputation  of  Wat  Tyler  stands  out  un- 
tarnished and  unshaken.1 

Yet  for  eight  days — and  eight  days  only — does 
history  allow  us  to  follow  the  career  of  this  remark- 
able man.  On  June  7th  Wat  Tyler  was  chosen  by 
the  men  of  Kent  to  lead  the  revolt ;  on  June  i5th 
he  was  dead.  Of  his  antecedents  we  know  nothing. 
Parentage,  birth-place,  age,  height,  and  personal 
appearance,  are  all  unrecorded.  His  trade  alone  we 
can  infer,  and  we  know  that  his  contemporaries 
trusted  him  to  the  full  :  for  no  suggestion  has  been 
made  of  any  kind  of  rivalry  or  jealousy  amongst  the 
leaders,  or  of  criticism  or  grumbling  amongst  the 
rank  and  file. 

Wat  Tyler  emerges  from  the  obscurity  of  history 
to  become  a  strong  democratic  leader.  For  eight 
days  he  commands  a  vast  army  of  men  ;  he  confronts 
the  king  as  an  equal ;  orders  the  execution  of  the 
chief  ministers  of  the  crown  ;  and  wrests  from  the 
king  promises  of  fundamental  social  importance. 
Then,  in  the  very  hour  of  victory,  an  unexpected 
blow  from  an  enemy  strikes  him  down,  and  death 
follows.  Surely  to  few  men  is  it  awarded  to  achieve 
an  immortal  reputation  in  so  brief  a  public  life. 

No  sooner  is  Tyler  acclaimed  as  leader  at 
Maidstone  than  the  commons  of  Kent  are  flocking 
to  the  standard  of  revolt.  The  cry  is  for  "  King 

1  "  Tyler,  according  to  Walsingham,  was  a  man  of  ready  ability 
and  good  sense.  Save  in  some  excesses,  which,  perhaps,  were  politic, 
possibly  unavoidable,  and  certainly  exaggerated,  the  rebels  under  him 
are  admitted  to  have  kept  good  order,  and  to  have  readily  submitted  to 
discipline." — Thorold  Rogers.  To  Froissart  Tyler  appears  merely  as  "a 
bad  man,  and  a  great  enemy  of  the  nobility." 


i38i]  Wat  Tyler  151 

Richard  and  the  Commons,"  and  it  goes  hard  with 
any  who  refuse  to  take  the  oath.  John  of  Gaunt  is 
the  enemy.  John  of  Gaunt  is  held  to  be  responsible 
for  all  the  mischief  wrought  on  the  coast  towns  of 
Kent  by  the  privateer  fleets  of  the  Scots  and  the 
French,  for  the  raiding  of  Rye  and  Winchelsea. 
(Only  in  the  previous  year  these  fleets  had  invaded 
the  Thames  as  far  as  Gravesend.)  John  of  Gaunt 
is  the  head  and  front  of  the  misrule  that  bled  the 
land  with  poll-taxes.  John  of  Gaunt  is  the  incarna- 
tion of  the  landlord  rule  that  would  keep  the 
labourer  in  bondage  for  ever.  So  bitter  is  the 
feeling  against  John  of  Gaunt,  and  so  acute  the  fear 
that  he  is  aiming  at  the  crown,  that  a  vow  is  taken 
by  the  men  of  Kent  that  no  man  named  "  John  " 
shall  be  King  of  England. 

John  of  Gaunt  was  the  common  enemy.  But 
John  of  Gaunt  was  far  away  on  the  Scottish  border, 
and  there  were  enemies  near  at  hand  to  be  dealt 
with.  The  manor-houses  of  Kent  were  attacked  ; 
in  a  few  cases,  where  their  owners  were  notoriously 
bad  landlords,  were  burnt.  The  main  thing,  however, 
was  to  obtain  the  rent-rolls,  the  lists  of  tenants  and 
serfs,  and  all  the  documents  of  the  lawyers.  These 
papers  were  seized  and  destroyed  by  the  peasants, 
for  no  assurance  of  freedom  was  possible  while  such 
evidence  of  service  could  be  produced.  These 
documents  were  the  legal  instruments  of  landlord 
rule ;  and  as  the  people  had  risen  to  end  this  rule, 
a  beginning  had  to  be  made  by  destroying  the 
machinery.  There  was  no  general  reign  of  terror 
in  the  country  ;  there  was  nothing  of  the  ferocity  of 
the  Jacquerie  in  France  ;  no  slaughter  of  landlords  ; 
and  no  common  destruction  of  property. 


152          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

The  nobility  seemed  to  expect  judgment  at  the 
hands  of  the  people,  and  those  who  were  at  Ply- 
mouth making  preparation  for  their  invasion  of 
France  put  to  sea  as  quickly  as  possible  when  news 
came  of  the  rising.1  But  the  people  had  risen  not 
for  blind  vengeance  or  for  civil  war,  and  the  class 
who  suffered  badly  at  the  rising  were  the  lawyers 
rather  than  the  landlords.  It  was  the  lawyer's  hand 
that  the  peasants  saw  and  felt,  and  not  the  mailed 
fist,  for  the  lawyer  was  not  only  the  land  agent  of  the 
lord  of  the  manor,  he  was  also  the  judge  in  matters 
of  dispute  between  landlord  and  tenant,  and  it  was 
he  who  kept  the  lists  of  villeins  and  serfs,  and  in  the 
service  of  his  lord  did  not  scruple  to  manipulate 
those  lists. 

In  those  first  days  of  the  rising,  when  yeomen  and 
more  than  one  landholder  joined  the  army  of  revolt,2 
and  all  who  were  willing  to  cry  "  King  Richard  and 
the  Commons "  were  counted  as  supporters,  the 
worst  that  the  landlord  suffered  (except  in  extreme 
cases)  was  the  loss  of  his  papers,  but  the  lawyer 
who  clung  to  his  office  was  often  hanged  without 
mercy,  as  a  scourge  to  the  commonwealth. 

Tyler  was  at  Canterbury  on  Monday,  June  loth, 
and  here  Archbishop  Sudbury's  palace  was  ransacked 
for  papers,  and  his  tenant-rolls  burnt.  Beyond 
this,  and  a  rough  exhortation  to  the  monks  to 
prepare  to  elect  a  new  archbishop,  no  injury  was 
done.  The  following  day  Tyler  was  back  at  Maid- 

1  "  Fearful  lest  their  voyage  should  be  prevented,  or  that  the  populace 
should  attack  them,  they  heaved  their  anchors  and  with  some  difficulty 
left  the  harbour,  for  the  wind  was  against  them,  and  put  to  sea,  when 
they  cast  anchor  for  a  wind." — Froissart. 

2  Two  names  at  least  have  been  preserved — Squire  Bertram  Wilming- 
ton of  Wye  and  John  Corehurst  of  Lamberhurst. 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  153 

stone,  and  his  men  burst  open  the  archbishop's 
prison  and  released  John  Ball,  with  all  others  who 
had  incurred  ecclesiastical  displeasure.  This  accom- 
plished, with  John  Ball,  the  people's  poor  priest,  in 
the  midst  of  them,  30,000  men  of  Kent — yeomen, 
craftsmen,  villeins  and  peasants — set  out  for  London 
under  Wat  Tyler's  command. 

Blackheath  was  reached  at  nightfall  on  Wednes- 
day, June  1 2th,  and  a  camp  fixed  ;  but  a  few  inde- 
fatigible  rebels  hastened  on  to  Southwark  that  same 
night  to  burst  open  the  Marshalsea  and  King's 
Bench  prisons.  John  Wraw  was  at  Blackheath,  and 
after  a  short  conference  with  Wat  Tyler,  hastened 
back  to  Suffolk  to  announce  that  the  hour  of  rising 
had  struck. 

Near  Eltham  Tyler  had  overtaken  the  young 
king's  mother,  the  widow  of  the  Black  Prince,  re- 
turning from  a  pilgrimage,  and  had  promised  that  no 
harm  should  befall  her  or  her  women  from  his  host. 
Reassured,  the  princess  and  her  company  went  on 
their  way  in  safety  to  the  Tower  of  London,  where 
Richard  and  his  council  were  assembled,  and  told 
of  the  great  uprising. 

Judges  had  already  been  despatched  into  Kent  at 
the  first  news  of  the  disorders,  but  had  turned  back 
before  reaching  Canterbury,  not  liking  the  look  of 
things. 

Early  on  Thursday  morning,  June  I3th,  the  camp 
at  Blackheath  was  astir.  It  was  Corpus  Christi  day 
and  a  solemn  festival.  After  mass  had  been  said 
before  all  the  people,  John  Ball  preached  on  his  old 
theme  of  equality  and  brotherhood.  "  For  if  God 
had  intended  some  to  be  serfs  and  others  lords  He 
would  have  made  a  distinction  between  them  at  the 


154          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

beginning."  He  went  on  to  speak  of  the  work  to  be 
taken  in  hand  at  once. 

"  Now  is  the  opportunity  given  to  Englishmen, 
if  they  do  but  choose  to  take  it,  of  casting  off 
the  yoke  they  have  borne  so  long,  of  winning  the 
freedom  they  have  always  desired.  Wherefore  let 
us  take  good  courage  and  behave  like  the  wise  hus- 
bandman of  scripture,  who  gathered  the  wheat  into 
his  barn,  but  uprooted  and  burned  the  tares  that  had 
half-choked  the  good  grain.  Now  the  tares  of 
England  are  her  oppressive  rulers,  and  the  time  of 
harvest  has  come.  Ours  it  is  to  pluck  up  these 
tares  and  make  away  with  them  all — the  evil  lords, 
the  unjust  judges,  the  lawyers,  every  man  indeed 
who  is  dangerous  to  the  common  good.  Then 
should  we  all  have  peace  for  the  present  and 
security  for  the  future.  For  when  the  great  ones 
have  been  rooted  up  and  cast  away,  all  will  enjoy 
equal  freedom,  all  will  have  common  nobility,  rank 
and  power." 

The  sermon  was  received  with  bursts  of  cheers, 
and  the  people  shouted  that  John  Ball  should  be 
archbishop,  "  for  that  the  present  archbishop  and 
chancellor,  Simon  Sudbury,  was  but  a  traitor." 

Later  that  morning  Sir  John  Newton  arrived  at 
the  Tower  with  a  message  from  Tyler,  asking  for  an 
audience  with  the  king.  All  along  it  was  the  belief 
of  the  commons  that  the  king  had  but  to  hear  the 
tale  of  their  wrongs  and  redress  would  be  speedily 
obtained. 

"  Hold  no  speech  with  the  shoeless  ruffians,"  was 
the  advice  of  Sir  Robert  Hales,  the  treasurer.  But 
Richard  agreed  to  an  interview,  and  presently  rowed 
down  the  Thames  in  the  royal  barge  as  far  as  Rother- 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  155 

hithe  with  the  Earl  of  Suffolk  (President  of  the 
Council),  and  the  Earls  of  Salisbury  and  Warwick. 

The  river  bank  was  crowded  with  the  commons 
of  Kent,  and  Wat  Tyler  and  John  Ball  urged  the 
king  to  land  and  listen  to  the  message  his  subjects 
brought.  They  were  promptly  rebuked  by  the  Earl 
of  Salisbury l  for  their  boldness  : 

"  Gentlemen,  you  are  not  properly  dressed,  nor 
are  you  in  a  fit  condition  for  the  king  to  talk  to 
you." 

Instead  of  landing,  Richard  listened  to  the  coun- 
sels of  fear  and  pride,  and  the  royal  barge  was 
turned  and  rowed  back  swiftly  to  the  Tower. 

Wat  Tyler  and  the  men  of  Kent,  with  thousands 
more  from  Surrey,  at  once  marched  on  to  London 
Bridge,  where  they  destroyed  the  houses  of  ill-fame 
that  clustered  round  the  south  side  of  the  bridge. 
The  prisons  had  been  pulled  down  the  night  before, 
and  now  the  brothels  were  burnt  to  the  ground  and 
their  inmates  dismissed  —  that  the  new  City  of 
God  of  John  Ball's  vision  might  be  cleansed  of 
its  old  foulness.  These  places  of  infamy,  rented  by 
Flemish  women,  were  the  property  of  William 
Walworth,  the  Mayor  of  London  ;  and  their  des- 
truction filled  him  with  rage  against  the  invaders. 

Walworth  made  some  attempt  to  fortify  London 
Bridge  by  placing  iron  chains  across  the  bridge  ; 
and  he  gave  orders  for  the  drawbridge  to  be  pulled 
up,  in  order  that  a  passage  might  be  prevented. 
But  on  Tyler's  threat  that  he  would  burn  the  bridge 
if  a  way  was  not  quickly  made  for  him,  Alderman 

1  Seven  years  later  this  Earl  of  Salisbury,  fleeing-  from  Henry  Boling- 
broke,  was  hanged  in  the  streets  of  Cirencester  at  the  hands  of  the 
people. 


156          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

Sibley  (who,  with  Aldermen  Home  and  Tonge, 
supported  the  claims  of  the  revolutionaries  on  the 
City  Corporation)  had  the  chains  removed  and  the 
draw-bridge  lowered,  and  Alderman  Home  met 
Tyler  at  the  city  gate  and  bade  him  welcome. 

Fifty  thousand  men  followed  Tyler  in  London, 
and  the  city  was  now  at  the  mercy  of  the  peasant 
army.  Walworth,  who  had  no  want  of  spirit,  de- 
clared to  the  king  and  his  council  in  the  Tower  that 
6,000  soldiers  could  be  raised  in  the  city,  but  "fear 
had  so  fallen  upon  the  soldiery  that  they  seemed 
half  dead  with  fright."  Sir  Robert  Knolles  with 
600  men-at-arms  guarded  the  Tower. 

It  was  now  that  Wat  Tyler's  great  qualities  of 
leadership  and  the  good  discipline  of  his  army  were 
seen.  With  London  in  his  hands,  he  warned  his 
followers  that  death  would  be  the  instant  punish- 
ment for  theft ;  and  proclaimed  to  the  citizens,  "  We 
are  indeed  zealots  for  truth  and  justice,  but  we  are 
not  thieves  and  robbers."  Every  respect  was  to  be 
shown  to  the  persons  and  property  of  the  people  of 
London,  and  wrath  was  only  to  fall  on  John  of 
Gaunt  and  the  ministers  of  the  crown,  and  the 
lawyers — the  enemies,  as  it  seemed  to  Tyler,  of  the 
good  estate  of  England.  In  return,  the  citizens 
offered  bread  and  ale  freely  to  the  invaders,  and 
London  artisans  joined  their  ranks  in  large 
numbers. 

The  archbishop's  palace  at  Lambeth  was  soon 
stormed,  and  all  the  records  it  contained  were 
destroyed  ;  the  building  itself  was  left  uninjured. 

At  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  the  Savoy  Palace  of 
John  of  Gaunt,  by  the  Strand,  was  in  flames  ;  and 
all  its  wealth  of  treasure,  rich  tapestries  and  costly 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  157 

furniture,  rare  vessels  of  gold  and  silver,  precious 
stones,  and  art  work  of  priceless  value,  heaped  up 
on  a  bonfire  or  ground  to  powder.  The  Duke  of 
Lancaster's  jewelled  coat,  covered  with  gems,  was 
set  up  as  a  target  and  riddled  with  arrows,  before  it 
was  cut  into  a  thousand  pieces  and  pounded  to  dust. 
One  wretched  man  was  caught  attempting  to  sneak 
off  with  a  silver  cup  ;  and  being  taken  in  the  act, 
was  put  to  death  as  Tyler  had  decreed.  The  Savoy 
was  burnt  to  the  ground,  but  no  one  interfered  with 
its  inhabitants  ;  and  Henry,  Earl  of  Derby,  John  of 
Gaunt's  son  (who  was  to  reign  in  Richard's  stead  as 
Henry  IV.),  passed  out  with  all  his  servants  un- 
molested. The  wine-cellar  proved  fatal  to  certain 
of  the  host,  who,  drinking  freely,  perished,  buried 
under  the  fallen  building. 

From  the  Savoy  the  army  of  destruction  passed 
to  the  Temple,  the  head-quarters  of  the  Knights 
Hospitallers,  of  whom  Sir  Robert  Hales  was  presi- 
dent, and  a  hive  of  lawyers.  The  Temple  was 
burnt,  but  no  lives  were  lost ;  for  the  lawyers,  "even 
the  most  aged  and  infirm  of  them,  scrambled  off  with 
the  agility  of  rats  or  evil  spirits." 

At  nightfall  the  priory  of  the  Hospitallers  at 
Clerkenwell,  the  prisons  at  the  Fleet  and  at  Newgate, 
and  the  Manor  House  at  Highbury,  had  all  been 
demolished  ;  and  the  men  of  Essex,  led  by  Thomas 
Faringdon,  a  London  baker,  were  at  Mile  End  ; 
while  William  Grindcobbe,  with  a  body  of  men  from 
St.  Albans,  lay  at  Highbury. 

In  vain  Walworth  urged  the  king  and  his 
royal  council  to  act.  Richard  had  sent  to  Tyler 
asking  for  a  written  statement  of  the  grievances 
of  the  commons,  and  had  been  told  in  reply 


158          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

that  the  king  must  meet  his  commons  face  to  face, 
and  hear  with  his  own  ears  their  demands.  In  the 
evening  Walworth  proposed  that  the  garrison  at 
the  Tower  should  be  despatched  against  Tyler,  "to 
fall  upon  these  wretches  who  were  in  the  streets,  and 
amounted  to  60,000,  while  they  were  asleep  and 
drunk.  They  might  be  killed  like  flies,"  Walworth 
added,  "  for  not  one  in  twenty  had  arms." 

But  the  handful  of  soldiers  at  the  Tower  were  in 
mortal  terror  of  the  peasant  host,  and  "all  had  so 
lost  heart  that  you  would  have  thought  them  more 
like  dead  men  than  living." 

The  Earl  of  Salisbury  checked  Walworth's  rash 
proposals.  "If  we  begin  what  we  cannot  carry 
through,"  he  observed,  "  we  shall  never  be  able  to 
repair  matters.  It  will  be  all  over  with  us  and  our 
heirs,  and  England  will  be  a  desert." 

An  open  conflict  with  Tyler  and  his  60,000  was 
a  very  hazardous  proceeding.  Who  could  be  sure 
of  escape  if  it  came  to  battle  ?  So  far  Tyler  had 
only  struck  at  the  chief  ministers  and  the  lawyers, 
and  why  should  others  risk  their  lives  in  such  a 
quarrel  ?  Besides,  it  was  said  that  Wat  Tyler  and  a 
mad  priest  of  Kent  were  for  doing  away  with  all 
nobles,  and  for  making  all  men  equal,  and  caution  was 
necessary  in  dealing  with  men  who  held  such  strange 
opinions.  England  without  its  nobility  would  be  a 
desert,  and  at  all  costs  such  an  irreparable  calamity 
as  the  loss  of  England's  nobility  must  be  prevented. 

So  Walworth  got  no  help  in  his  plans  for  resist- 
ance ;  and  when  that  night  a  messenger  from  Tyler 
warned  the  king  that  if  he  refused  to  meet  the 
commons  of  England  in  open  conference,  the  people 
would  seize  the  Tower,  Richard  sent  word  in  reply 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  159 

promising  to  meet  his  subjects  on  the  morrow  at 
noon  at  Mile  End,  and  there  hear  their  complaints. 

Tyler  accepted  the  king's  word,  and  after  sleeping 
with  his  men  hard  by  the  Tower,  at  St.  Catherine's 
Wharf,  was  at  Mile  End  betimes.  Here  he  met 
Grindcobbe,  and  hearing  that  the  people  of  Hert- 
fordshire had  trouble  with  the  abbot  at  St.  Albans, 
bade  Grindcobbe  return  and  accomplish  freedom  for 
the  abbot's  tenants  and  serfs. 

Richard  went  to  Mile  End  with  no  large  retinue, 
and  two  of  his  companions,  the  Earl  of  Kent  and 
Sir  John  Holland,  left  him  at  Whitechapel  and 
galloped  off  in  craven  fear  of  the  multitude  that 
thronged  the  road.  Richard,  though  he  was  only 
fifteen,  displayed  both  courage  and  cunning  when 
confronted  with  Tyler.  He  knew  that  the  discon- 
tent in  the  country  was  directed  against  the  govern- 
ment, and  not  against  the  king,  and  that  the  misrule 
could  not  fairly  be  laid  to  his  charge.  Besides,  he 
was  the  son  of  the  Black  Prince,  and  the  people 
showed  no  signs  of  hostility.  His  policy  was  to 
yield  and  to  wait  an  opportunity  for  regaining  power. 

The  conference  at  Mile  End  began  with  a  request 
from  Richard  to  know  what  was  required  of  him. 
Tyler  answered  that  first  all  traitors  should  be  exe- 
cuted, and  to  this  demand  the  king  agreed.  Then 
four  definite  proposals  were  put  forward  by  Wat 
Tyler  : 

1.  A  free  and  general  pardon  to  all  concerned  in 
the  rising. 

2.  The  total  abolition  of  all  villeinage  and  serf- 
dom. 

3.  An  end  to  all  tolls  and  market  dues, — "  free- 
dom to  buy  and  sell  in  all  cities,  burghs,  mercantile 


160          Leaders  of  the  People  [1381 

towns,  and  other  places  within  our  kingdom  of 
England." 

4.  All  customary  tenants  to  be  turned  into  lease- 
holders whose  rent  should  be  fixed  at  4d.  an  acre  for 
ever. 

Richard  at  once  assented  to  these  requests,  and  to 
prevent  any  uncertainty  and  remove  all  doubt  or 
suspicion  of  good  faith,  thirty  clerks  were  set  to  work 
on  the  spot  to  draw  up  charters  of  manumission, 
and  to  present  banners  to  each  county  represented. 

Then  Richard  bade  the  people  return  home  in 
peace,  bearing  the  king's  banner  in  token  that  the 
king  had  granted  the  request  of  his  subjects.  One 
or  two  from  each  village  remained  to  carry  the 
charters  of  freedom  signed  and  sealed  by  royal 
warrant. 

Richard  was  taken  at  his  word.  Thousands  of 
the  peasants  dispersed  that  day  believing  their  cause 
had  triumphed.  Nothing  could  be  plainer  than  the 
charters  of  manumission  : — "  Know  that  of  our 
special  grace  we  have  manumitted  all  our  liege  and 
singular  subjects  and  others  of  the  county  of  Hert- 
ford, freed  each  and  all  of  their  old  bondage,  and 
made  them  quit  by  these  presents  ;  pardon  them  all 
felonies,  treasons,  transgressions,  and  extortions  com- 
mitted by  any  and  all  of  them,  and  assure  them  of 
our  summapax" 

So  ran  the  document  which  the  peasants  of  Hert- 
ford bore,  and  similar  charters  were  given  to  the 
counties  of  Bedford,  Essex,  Kent,  and  Surrey. 

Richard  was  also  taken  at  his  word  concerning 
the  execution  of  traitors,  and  by  the  authority  of 
Wat  Tyler,  Archbishop  Sudbury,  the  chancellor,  Sir 
Robert  Hales,  the  treasurer,  and  John  Legge,  the 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  161 

poll-tax  commissioner,  were  dragged  out  of  the 
Tower  and  beheaded  on  Tower  Hill.  When  Richard 
returned  from  Mile  End  the  heads  of  these  three 
men  were  on  the  gate  of  London  Bridge. 

Simon  Sudbury,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  de- 
served a  better  fate,  for  he  was  an  amiable  and  gentle 
priest,  and  "  lenient  to  heretics."  As  chancellor  he 
shared  the  punishment  of  a  government  deservedly 
hated,  but  there  were  many  who  deplored  his  death. 

The  soldiers  at  the  Tower  offered  no  resistance, 
but  joked  and  fraternised  with  the  people. 

(John  of  Gaunt's  chaplain,  William  Appleton, 
some  of  Legge's  subordinates,  and  Richard  Lyons 
also  perished  that  day  on  Tower  Hill.  Of  these, 
Richard  Lyons  was  a  thoroughly  corrupt  person, 
who  five  years  earlier  had  been  convicted  of  gross 
usury  and  of  fraudulently  "  forestalling  "  in  the  wool 
trade,  and  had  escaped  the  penalty  of  the  law  on 
being  sentenced  to  pay  a  heavy  fine  and  suffer  im- 
prisonment. At  one  time  he  had  been  a  member  of 
Edward  III.'s  council,  and  in  that  capacity  had  en- 
riched himself  and  his  friends  at  the  expense  of  the 
nation.) 

A  cry  was  raised  in  London  that  night  against 
the  Flemings,  and  many  of  these  industrious  aliens, 
whose  only  offence  was  the  employment  of  cheap 
labour,  were  put  to  death,  denied  even  the  right  of 
sanctuary  when  they  fled  to  the  altar  of  the  church 
of  the  Austin  Friars.  The  houses  of  certain  un- 
popular citizens  were  also  fired,  and  it  went  hard 
with  all  who  refused  to  shout  for  "  King  Richard 
and  the  Commons." 

But  Tyler  gave  no  sanction  to  the  attack  on  the 
Flemings,  and  though  the  London  mob  took  the  law 


1 62          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

into  its  own  hands  and  dealt  roughly  with  those 
whom  it  disliked,  there  is  no  evidence  of  general 
rioting  and  disorder.  To  the  end  the  peasant  folk 
in  London  remembered  the  brotherhood  John  Ball 
had  proclaimed,  and  respected  their  fellows,  and 
their  good  order  is  a  lasting  tribute  to  their  leaders. 

Tyler,  with  the  bulk  of  the  men  of  Kent  and 
Surrey,  remained  in  the  city,  and  the  king  hearing 
of  what  had  happened  at  the  Tower,  decided  to  pass 
the  night  at  the  Wardrobe,  by  St.  Paul's,  whither  his 
mother  had  gone  when  the  Tower  was  invaded. 

Tyler,  in  spite  of  all  that  had  been  obtained  at 
Mile  End,  was  not  satisfied.  The  peasants  and 
serfs  had  been  freed  by  royal  warrant,  but  the  land- 
lords remained  in  possession  of  power,  and  there 
was  no  promise  of  better  government,  no  word  as  to 
the  restoration  of  the  old  common  rights  in  the 
land,  or  the  repeal  of  the  savage  forest  laws. 
Reforms  had  been  won,  but  the  changes  were  not 
strong  enough  to  ensure  a  social  revolution. 

Once  more,  on  the  Saturday,  June  i5th,  Richard 
was  invited  to  meet  his  subjects,  and  again  he 
declared  his  willingness,  summoning  his  commons 
by  proclamation  to  meet  him  that  afternoon  at 
Smithfield,  in  the  square  outside  St.  Bartholomew's 
Priory. 

It  seemed  on  the  morning  of  June  i5th  as  though 
the  rising  had  succeeded  triumphantly.  The  peasants 
had  their  charters  of  manumission,  the  nobles  were 
thoroughly  alarmed  and  cowed,  the  soldiery  power- 
less, and  Wat  Tyler  and  his  men  still  held  the  City 
of  London. 

Holding  such  an  advantage,  Tyler  determined  to 
make  the  king  decree  further  reforms,  and  when  the 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  163 

two  met  at  Smithfield,  the  confidence  of  victory  could 
be  seen  in  the  peasant  leader's  bearing. 

Richard,  with  two  hundred  retainers,  and  with 
Henry,  Earl  of  Derby,  the  Earls  of  Suffolk  and 
Salisbury,  Sir  Simon  Burley,  and  Walworth,  the 
mayor,  were  on  the  east  side  of  the  square,  the 
great  priory  at  their  back. 

Tyler  and  his  army  drew  up  on  the  west  side, 
and  when  Walworth  opened  the  proceedings  by 
calling  on  Wat  Tyler  to  speak  with  the  king,  Tyler, 
seated  on  a  little  horse,  rode  out  into  the  middle  of 
the  square  with  a  single  attendant.  There  he  dis- 
mounted, dropped  on  one  knee  before  the  king,  and 
shook  him  heartily  by  the  hand.  He  bade  Richard 
be  of  good  cheer,  and  declared  that  within  a  fort- 
night he  should  have  even  more  thanks  from  the 
commons  than  he  had  won  already.  "  You  and  I 
shall  be  good  comrades  yet,"  Tyler  added. 

Richard,  in  some  embarrassment,  enquired  why 
the  commons  did  not  return  home,  and  Tyler  ans- 
wered with  a  great  and  solemn  oath  that  no  one 
should  leave  the  city  until  they  had  got  a  further 
redressing  of  all  their  grievances.  "And  much  the 
worse  will  it  be  for  the  lords  of  this  realm  if  this 
charter  be  refused,"  he  concluded. 

Then  Richard  bade  Tyler  say  what  charter  it  was 
the  commons  demanded. 

"  First,  then,"  said  Tyler,  "let  no  law  but  the  law 
of  Winchester  prevail  throughout  the  land,  and  let 
no  man  be  made  an  outlaw  by  the  decree  of  judges 
and  lawyers.1  Grant  also  that  no  lord  shall  hence- 

1  This  law  of  Winchester  was  the  statute  of  Edward  I.,  1285,  which 
authorised  local  authorities  to  appoint  constables  and  preserve  the 
peace.  Tyler's  aim  was  to  strengthen  local  government  in  the  counties, 
making  them  as  far  as  possible  self-governing  communes. 


164          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

forth  exercise  lordship  over  the  commons  ;  and  since 
we  are  oppressed  by  so  vast  a  horde  of  bishops  and 
clerks,  let  there  be  but  one  bishop  in  England  ;  and 
let  the  property  and  goods  of  the  holy  Church  be 
divided  fairly  according  to  the  needs  of  the  people  in 
each  parish,  after  in  justice  making  suitable  provi- 
sion for  the  present  clergy  and  monks.  Finally,  let 
there  be  no  more  villeins  in  England,  but  grant  us 
all  to  be  free  and  of  one  condition." 

"All  that  you  have  asked  for  I  promise  readily," 
Richard  answered,  "  if  only  it  be  consistent  with 
the  regality  of  my  crown.  And  now  let  the  com- 
mons return  home  since  their  requests  have  been 
granted." 

In  the  presence  of  his  nobles  and  the  hearing  of 
his  people  the  king  had  promised  that  the  demands 
of  his  subjects  should  be  granted. 

For  Wat  Tyler  the  victory  seemed  complete,  and 
now  that  the  battle  was  won  he  called  out  that  he 
was  thirsty,  and  complained  of  a  parched  throat. 
The  days  had  been  strenuous,  and  Tyler  longed  for 
a  draught  of  the  good  home-brewed  beer  of  his 
native  county.  His  attendant  brought  him  water, 
and  Tyler  rinsed  out  his  mouth  with  it,  to  the  disgust 
of  the  king's  courtiers.  Then  beer  was  brought  in 
a  mighty  tankard,  and  Tyler  drank  a  deep  draught 
to  the  health  of  "King  Richard  and  the  Commons." 
He  remounted  his  little  horse,  while  the  nobles  stood 
by  in  silent  and  sullen  anger,  "for  no  lord  or  coun- 
sellor dared  to  open  his  mouth  and  give  an  answer 
to  the  commons  in  such  a  situation."  Had  they  not 
heard  it  proclaimed  that  henceforth  all  were  to  be 
free  and  equal  in  the  land  ? 

A   "valet  of   Kent,"  some    knight    in    the    royal 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  165 

service,  broke  silence,  muttering  loudly  his  opinion 
that  Wat  Tyler  was  the  greatest  thief  and  robber 
in  all  Kent. 

Tyler  caught  the  abusive  words,  and  immediately 
ordered  his  attendant  to  cut  down  the  man  who  had 
spoken  in  this  insulting  fashion. 

The  "  valet"  edged  back  within  the  ranks  of  the 
king's  party,  and  Tyler  drew  his  dagger.  Walworth, 
sharing  to  the  full  the  rage  of  the  nobles  at  the 
capitulation  of  the  king,  and  yet  anxious  to  avoid  a 
conflict,  shouted  that  he  would  arrest  all  those  who 
drew  weapons  in  the  royal  presence.  Tyler  struck 
impatiently  at  Walworth,  but  the  blow  was  harm- 
less, for  the  mayor  had  armour  on  beneath  his  jerkin. 

Before  Tyler  could  defend  himself  the  mayor 
retaliated.  Drawing  a  short  cutlass  he  slashed  at 
Tyler,  wounding  him  in  the  neck  so  that  he  fell 
from  his  horse.  And  with  the  fall  of  their  leader  fell 
all  the  promised  liberties  of  the  peasants,  and  the 
rising  collapsed. 

Two  knights,  Ralph  Standish  and  another,  plunged 
their  swords  into  him  while  he  was  on  the  ground. 
Still,  mortally  wounded  though  he  was,  Tyler 
managed  to  scramble  on  to  his  little  horse.  He 
rode  a  yard  or  two,  gave  a  last  call  on  the  commons 
to  avenge  his  death,  and  then  dropped  to  the  ground 
to  rise  no  more. 

Had  the  commons  at  once  attacked  the  king's 
party,  they  would  have  conquered.  But  confusion 
fell  upon  the  people,  and  there  was  no  one  ready  to 
take  command.  "  Let  us  stand  together,"  "  We  will 
die  with  our  captain  or  avenge  him,"  "Shoot,  lads, 
shoot," — the  various  cries  went  up,  and  the  bowmen 
looked  to  their  weapons. 


1 66          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

But  Richard,  with  the  presence  of  mind  that 
marked  his  dealings  with  the  people  at  Mile  End, 
turned  the  doubt  and  uncertainty  to  his  own  advan- 
tage. He  rode  out  boldly  into  the  middle  of  the 
square,  reminded  the  people  that  he,  and  not  Tyler, 
was  their  king,  and  bade  them  follow  him  into  the 
fields  and  receive  their  charters. 

There  was  no  reason  to  refuse  obedience,  no 
reason  to  mistrust  the  king.  Tyler  had  always 
spoken  well  of  Richard,  and  the  people  themselves 
had  seen  him  only  yesterday  sign  their  charters,  and 
had  heard  him  in  Tyler's  presence,  only  a  few 
minutes  ago,  promise  to  do  the  will  of  the  commons. 
It  was  not  by  the  king's  hand  that  their  leader  had 
been  slain. 

A  small  band  carried  Tyler's  body  into  the  Priory 
of  St.  Bartholomew,  while  the  rest  of  the  peasants 
followed  Richard  into  the  fields  that  stretched  from 
Clerkenwell  to  Islington.  Here  he  held  them  until 
Sir  Robert  Knolles  arrived  with  700  soldiers,  for 
Walworth  had  lost  no  time  in  spreading  the  news 
that  Tyler  was  dead,  and  in  raising  a  troop  for  the 
king.  By  Richard's  orders  the  commons  were  dis- 
persed when  the  soldiery  arrived,  the  men  of  Kent, 
now  broken  and  dispirited,  being  marched  through 
the  city,  and  left  to  take  their  way  home. 

That  very  night  Walworth  and  Standish  were 
knighted  for  what  they  had  done,  and  in  the  morn- 
ing Wat  Tyler's  head  stared  horribly  from  London 
Bridge. 

"My  son,  what  sorrow  I  have  suffered  for  thee 
this  day,"  cried  the  king's  mother,  when  Richard 
came  to  the  Wardrobe. 

"  I  know  it   well,  madam,"  answered    the    king  ; 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  167 

"  but  rejoice  with  me  now,  and  thank  God  that  I 
have  this  day  won  back  my  heritage  of  England, 
so  nearly  lost." 

The  great  uprising  was  over.  Wat  Tyler  had 
fallen,  as  it  seemed,  in  the  very  hour  of  victory. 

By  Walworth's  orders,  Jack  Straw  and  two  promi- 
nent men  of  Kent  were  hanged  on  the  night  of 
June  1 5th,  without  the  formality  of  trial.  Jack 
Straw,  an  itinerant  priest  sharing  John  Ball's  views, 
it  is  said,  explained  before  he  died  what  had  been  in 
the  minds  of  the  leaders  of  the  revolt.  They  had 
meant  to  get  rid  of  the  supremacy  of  the  landlords 
altogether,  and  to  substitute  for  the  established 
clergy  a  voluntary  ministry  of  mendicant  friars  ;  the 
boy-king  was  to  be  enlisted  in  the  cause  of  the 
revolution  before  the  monarchy  was  finally  abolished ; 
and  in  place  of  parliament  and  royal  council  each 
county  was  to  enjoy  self-government.1 

No  longer  in  the  presence  of  danger,  the  king  and 
his  ministers  struck  fiercely  at  the  rebels. 

On  June  i8th  a  general  proclamation  was  issued 
ordering  the  arrest  of  all  malefactors  and  the  dis- 
persal of  all  unruly  gatherings.  On  June  22nd, 
Chief  Justice  Sir  Robert  Tressilian  went  on  assize, 
and  "showed  mercy  to  none  and  made  great  havock." 
John  Ball  was  taken  at  Coventry  and,  with  Grind- 
cobbe,  hanged  at  St.  Albans  on  July  I5th. 

The  Earl  of  Suffolk  went  down  to  Suffolk  with 
500  lances  on  June  23rd,  and  John  Wraw,  with 
twenty  others,  including  four  beneficed  clergy,  was 
quickly  taken  and  hanged.  Henry  Despenser, 

1  "  It  was  in  the  preaching  of  John  Ball  that  England  first  listened  to 
the  knell  of  feudalism,  and  the  declaration  of  the  rights  of  man." — J.  R. 
Green . 


1 68          Leaders  of  the  People          [1381 

Bishop  of  Norwich,  grandson  of  Edward  III.'s 
minister,  suppressed  the  rising  in  Norfolk,  and 
walked  beside  Litster  to  the  gallows. 

At  least  a  thousand  peasant  lives  were  sacrificed 
to  the  law  under  Tressilian's  sentence. 

At  Waltham  a  deputation  came  to  Richard  to  ask 
if  it  were  true  that  the  royal  promises  and  charters 
were  annulled,  and  the  king's  answer  left  no  room 
for  doubt,  for  it  breathed  all  the  hatred  and  contempt 
of  the  commons  that  Tyler  had  striven  to  end  : 

"  O  vile  and  odious  by  land  and  sea,  you  who  are 
not  worthy  to  live  when  compared  with  the  lords 
whom  ye  have  attacked  ;  you  should  be  forthwith 
punished  with  the  vilest  deaths  were  it  not  for  the 
office  ye  bear.  Go  back  to  your  comrades  and  bear 
the  king's  answer.  You  were  and  are  rustics,  and 
shall  remain  in  bondage,  not  that  of  old,  but  in  one 
infinitely  worse.  For  as  long  as  we  live,  and  by 
God's  help  rule  over  this  realm,  we  will  attempt  by 
all  our  faculties,  powers,  and  means  to  make  you 
such  an  example  of  offence  to  the  heirs  of  your 
servitude  as  that  they  may  have  you  before  their 
eyes,  and  you  may  supply  them  with  a  perpetual 
ground  for  cursing  and  fearing  you." 

In  despair  at  this  rough  ending  to  all  their 
cherished  hopes  of  freedom,  the  Essex  peasants 
made  a  last  attempt  to  fight  for  liberty,  and  on 
June  28th,  at  Great  Baddow  and  Billericay,  more 
than  500  fell  before  the  king's  soldiery. 

On  July  2nd  all  the  charters  of  manumission  and 
royal  pardons  were  declared  formally  annulled, 
and  sheriffs  were  strictly  forbidden  to  release  any 
prisoners.  It  was  not  till  August  3Oth  an  amnesty 
was  granted  to  those  suspected  of  taking  part  in  the 


1381]  Wat  Tyler  169 

rising.  In  the  autumn  parliament  refused  to  ratify 
the  charters,  and  the  lawyers  declared  that  without 
the  consent  of  parliament  the  charters  were  illegal. 

So  there  was  an  end  to  all  Wat  Tyler  and  the 
peasants  had  risen  to  obtain,  and  well  might  it  seem 
that  the  rising  had  been  in  vain.1 

Yet  it  was  not  altogether  in  vain  that  John  Ball 
had  rung  his  bell  and  died  for  his  faith,  that  Wat 
Tyler  had  led  the  peasant  folk  of  Kent  to  do  battle 
for  freedom.  The  poll-tax  was  stopped  for  one 
thing.  And  villeinage  was  doomed.  "  The  land- 
lords gave  up  the  practice  of  demanding  base 
services  ;  they  let  their  lands  to  leasehold  tenants, 
and  accepted  money  payments  in  lieu  of  labour  ; 
they  ceased  to  recall  the  emancipated  labourer  into 
serfdom  or  to  oppose  his  assertion  of  right  in  the 
courts  of  the  manor  and  the  county."  (W.  Stubbs.) 

The  great  uprising  brought  out  the  desire  for 
personal  liberty  in  the  labouring  people  of  England 
that  has  never  since  been  utterly  quenched.  It  was 
the  first  insistence  that  peasants  and  serfs  were  men 
of  England.  "  It  taught  the  king's  officers  and 
gentle  folks  that  they  must  treat  the  peasants  like 
men  if  they  wished  them  to  behave  quietly,  and 
it  led  most  landlords  to  set  free  their  bondsmen, 
and  to  take  fixed  money  payments  instead  of  un- 
certain services  from  their  customary  tenants,  so 
that  in  a  hundred  years'  time  there  were  very  few 
bondsmen  left  in  England."  (F.  York  Powell.) 

If  Wat  Tyler  died  as  a  man  should  for  the  cause 
he  loves,  few  of  those  who  trampled  on  the  cause  of 

1  "  Observe  how  fortunate  matters  turned  out,  for  had  the  rebels 
succeeded  in  their  intentions  they  would  have  destroyed  the  whole 
nobility  of  Eng-land,  and  after  their  success  other  countries  would  have 
rebelled." — Froissart. 


170          Leaders  of  the  People  [1381 

the  peasants  were  to  know   the  paths  of  peace  in 
later  years. 

Richard  died  in  prison  at  the  hands  of  Henry 
Bolingbroke,  John  of  Gaunt's  son,  whom  Tyler  had 
let  depart  in  safety  when  the  Savoy  was  in  flames. 
The  Earls  of  Suffolk  and  Warwick  died  exiled 
fugitives.  The  Earl  of  Salisbury,  fleeing  from 
Henry  V.,  was  hanged  in  the  streets  of  Cirencester. 
Chief  Justice  Tressilian  was  hanged  for  a  traitor  in 
1387,  and  Sir  Simon  Burley  was  beheaded. 

This  worldly  wealth  is  nought  perseverant 
Nor  ever  abides  it  in  stabilitie. 


Jack  Cade,  the  Captain  of  Kent 

1450 


AUTHORITIES:  William  of  Worcester,  Gregory,  Mayor 
of  London,  1451-2  ;  Collections  of  a  London  Citizen  ;  an 
English  Chronicle ;  Three  Fifteenth  Century  Chronicles 
(Camden  Society);  Fabyan — Ellis  Letters  (second,  series), 
Issue  Rolls,  Devon,  Rolls  of  Parliament,  Paston  Letters, 
vol.  i,  with  introduction  by  Dr.  Gairdner  ;  Orridge — 
Illustrations  of  Jack  Cade's  Rebellion  ;  Durrant  Cooper — 
John  Cade's  Followers  in  Kent  and  Sussex  ;  J.  Clayton — 
True  Story  of  Jack  Cade  ;  Dr.  G.  Kriehn — The  English 
Rising  in  1450,  Strasburg,  1892. 


JACK    CADE,    THE 
CAPTAIN    OF    KENT 


1 


rising  of  the  commons  of  Kent  in  1450 
under  their  captain,  Jack  Cade,  was  the 
protest  of  people — sick  of  the  misrule  at 
home  and  of  the  mismanagement  of  affairs 
abroad — driven  to  take  up  arms  against  an  incapable 
government  that  would  not  heed  gentler  measures. 

It  was  not  such  a  peasant  revolt  as  Wat  Tyler 
had  led,  this  rising  of  the  fifteenth  century.  It  was 
largely  the  work  of  men  of  some  local  importance, 
and  country  squires  were  active  in  enrolling  men, 
employing  the  parish  constable  for  that  purpose  in  a 
good  many  parishes.1 

For  years  discontent  had  been  rife.  Henry  VI.,  a 
weak,  religious  man,  more  fit  for  the  cloister  than 
the  throne,  had  lost  the  great  statesmen  of  the  early 
years  of  his  reign.  The  Duke  of  Bedford,  good 
Duke  Humphrey  of  Gloucester,  and  Cardinal  Beau- 
fort were  all  dead,  and  Richard,  Duke  of  York,  by 
far  the  ablest  man  left  among  the  nobles,  had  been 
banished  to  the  government  of  Ireland.  The  Duke 
of  Suffolk  became  the  chief  minister  of  the  crown  in 
1445,  and  all  the  disasters  of  the  war  in  France  and 
of  corrupt  maladministration  in  England  were  laid  at 
his  door.  Suffolk  was  responsible  for  the  king's 
marriage  with  the  penniless  princess,  Margaret  of 

1  See  Durrant  Cooper— -John  Cade's  Followers  in  Kent. 
'73 


174          Leaders  of  the  People          [1450 

Anjou,  who,  ambitious  and  self-willed,  proved  the 
worst  possible  counsellor  for  Henry.  And  the  price 
of  this  marriage  was  the  territories  of  Anjou  and 
Maine,  which  were  ceded  to  Margaret's  father, 
besides  a  heavy  tax  of  one-fifteenth  of  all  incomes 
demanded  by  Suffolk  in  payment  for  his  expenses  in 
arranging  and  carrying  out  the  undesirable  wedding. 
The  years  of  Suffolk's  ministry  saw  nothing  but 
defeat  and  disgrace  as  the  hundred  years'  war  with 
France  drew  to  its  end.  The  victories  of  Edward 
III.  and  Henry  V.,  and  all  the  wealth  of  life  and 
treasure  poured  out  so  lavishly  by  England,  had 
come  to  nothing,  and  by  1451  all  France  save  Calais 
was  lost.  Popular  discontent  turned  to  action  early 
in  1450  against  Suffolk  and  his  fellow  ministers.  At 
the  opening  of  parliament  Suffolk  was  impeached  as 
a  traitor,  along  with  Lord  Say-and-Sele,  the  trea- 
surer, and  Ayscough,  Bishop  of  Salisbury ;  and 
Suffolk,  without  even  demanding  a  trial  by  his  peers, 
threw  himself  on  the  king's  mercy.  Henry  was 
satisfied  with  the  banishment  of  his  fallen  minister 
for  five  years  ;  but  when  Suffolk  went  on  board,  the 
sailors  of  the  vessel  that  was  to  take  him  across  seas 
decreed  a  capital  sentence,  and  after  a  rough  court- 
martial  trial  the  Duke  of  Suffolk  was  beheaded  on 
May  2nd  in  a  small  boat  off  the  coast  of  Dover,  and 
his  body  left  on  the  sands.  Four  months  earlier, 
Moleyns,  Bishop  of  Chichester,  who  had  only  just 
resigned  the  keepership  of  the  Privy  Seal,  and  was 
known  as  a  supporter  of  Suffolk's,  had  been  slain  by 
the  sailors  of  Portsmouth,  when  he  arrived  at  that 
town  with  arrears  of  pay  long  overdue  to  the  troops. 
Ayscough,  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  survived  till  the  end 
of  June,  and  then,  at  the  time  when  Cade  was  march- 


1450]  Jack  Cade  175 

ing  on  London,  he  was  dragged  away  from  the  very 
altar  of  Erdington  Church,  in  Wiltshire,  when  he 
had  said  mass,  and  put  to  death  on  a  hill  there  by 
the  infuriated  people  of  his  diocese.1 

Widespread  as  the  discontent  was  in  1450,  there 
was  no  general  movement  throughout  the  land  as 
in  the  days  when  John  Ball  and  his  companions 
bound  the  peasants  together  by  village  clubs.  Kent, 
"impatient  in  wrongs,  disdaining  of  too  much 
oppression,  and  ever  desirous  of  new  change 
and  new  fangleness,"  was  well  organised  for 
revolt,  and  the  men  of  Surrey  and  Sussex  were 
ready  to  bear  arms  with  Cade.  Outside  these 
counties  no  one  is  found  to  have  taken  the  lead 
against  the  government.  Kent  and  Sussex  had 
their  own  reasons  for  revolt,  for  piracy  swept  the 
English  Channel  unchecked,  and  the  highways  were 
infested  with  robbers — soldiers  broken  in  the  war  ; 
and  they  had  their  leader — Mortimer,  whom  some 
called  "  John  Mendall  "  and  others,  later,  Jack  Cade. 
So  by  the  end  of  May  a  full  list  of  grievances  and 
necessary  reforms  was  drawn  up,  and  the  commons 
of  Kent  had,  for  the  second  time  in  history,  risen  in 
arms  and  encamped  on  Blackheath,  resolute  to  get 
redress  from  the  king  for  their  injuries. 

The  success  of  democratic  revolt  depends  largely 
on  the  clear  courage  of  its  leaders  and  the  complete 
confidence  of  the  people  in  those  they  elect  for  their 
captains.  In  1450  Jack  Cade  proved  himself  both 

1  "These  two  bishops  were  wonder  covetous  men,  evil  beloved  among 
the  common  people  and  holden  suspect  of  many  defaults  ;  assenting  and 
willing  to  the  death  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  as  it  were  said." — (A 
Chronicle  of  Henry  VI).  According  to  Gasgoigne — Loci  e  Libra  Veri- 
tatum — the  people  said  of  Ayscough  :  "  He  always  kept  with  the  king 
and  was  his  confessor,  and  did  not  reside  in  his  own  diocese  of  Sarum 
with  us,  nor  maintain  hospitality." 


176          Leaders  of  the  People          [1450 

clear-headed  and  brave,  and  the  men  of  Kent  fol- 
lowed him  whole-heartedly. 

To  this  day  we  are  still  in  the  dark  as  to  the  real 
name  and  family  of  the  Captain  of  Kent.  He  was 
known  popularly  as  "  Mortimer,"  and  was  so  de- 
scribed in  the  "  pardon  "  he  received.  He  was  a 
man  of  some  property,  or  he  would  not  have  been 
attainted  by  special  act  of  parliament,  nor  have 
enjoyed  the  confidence  of  the  men  of  substance  who 
accepted  his  generalship.  He  was  known  as  an 
Irishman  and  as  a  soldier  in  the  French  wars,  and  it 
is  likely  enough  that  he  served  under  the  Duke  of 
York  both  in  France  and  Ireland.  His  strong 
advocacy  of  the  claims  of  York  favours  the  notion  of 
kinsmanship ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  York  was  by 
far  the  ablest  statesman  of  the  day,  and  to  demand 
his  recall  to  the  king's  council  was  no  guarantee  of 
family  motives. 

There  was  some  talk  at  the  time  that  Cade  was 
called  John  Aylesmere,  and  that  he  was  married  to 
the  daughter  of  a  Surrey  squire  at  Taundede.  But 
there  is  no  more  evidence  for  these  things  than  for 
the  charges  made  against  him  in  the  warrant  for  his 
arrest,  that  he  had  once  killed  a  woman  in  Sussex 
and  had  then  fled  to  France  and  fought  with  the 
French  arms. 

The  undisputed  high  character  of  Cade's  followers 
is  all  against  the  portrait  painted  by  the  government 
after  his  death  ;  when,  anxious  to  blacken  the  good 
name  of  so  resolute  a  leader,  it  was  made  out  that 
he  was  merely  a  disreputable  ruffian.  The  land- 
owners of  Kent  and  Sussex  would  never  have 
accepted  for  their  captain  a  mere  swashbuckling 
blackguard.  They  rallied  to  him  as  a  Mortimer, 


1450]  Jack  Cade  177 

seeing  in  him  a  likeness  to  Richard,  Duke  of  York.1 
If  his  real  name  was  Cade,  then  he  was  probably  a 
squire  or  yeoman,  for  Cade  was  no  uncommon  name 
round  Mayfield  and  Heathfield  in  Sussex,  and  Cades 
were  landed  proprietors  near  Reigate  as  late  as  the 
seventeenth  century. 

It  was  enough  that,  chosen  Captain  of  Kent,  Cade, 
or  Mortimer,  was  known  and  trusted  as  a  brave, 
upright  man  of  good  character  and  ability.2 
Whether  descended  from  nobles  or  of  good  Sussex 
stock  was  a  small  matter  to  men  in  earnest  for  the 
changes  and  reforms  the  country  needed. 

Ashford  was  the  heart  of  the  rising,  and  from 
Ashford  the  host  marched  to  Blackheath,  where,  at 
the  beginning  of  June,  the  camp  was  fixed.  The 
army,  estimated  at  46,000,  included  18  esquires,  74 
county  gentlemen,  and  some  five  clerks  in  holy 
orders,  who  were  presently  joined  by  the  Abbot  of 
Battle,  the  Prior  of  Lewes,  and  twenty-three  county 
gentlemen  from  Sussex. 

Cade  at  once  explained  that  they  must  deal 
directly  with  the  king  if  they  were  to  get  relief  from 
their  present  burdens,  and  then  set  to  work  to  draw 
up  the  bill  of  "  the  complaint  and  requests"  of  the 
commons  of  Kent,  while  the  rank  and  file  laboured 
"  to  dyke  and  stake  the  camp  all  about,  as  it  had 
been  in  the  land  of  war." 

But  war  had  not  yet  been  declared,  and  for  the 

1  "  He  himself  asserted  that  he  had  been  a  captain  under  the  Duke  of 
York,  and  that  his  real  name  was  Mortimer,  which  may  possibly  have 
been  true,  for  there  were  several  illegitimate  branches  of  the  house  of 
March." — Professor  Oman,  Political  History  of  England. 

2  "A   youngf  man  of  a  godly  nature   and  right  pregnant  of  wit." — 
Holinshed.       Shakspeare's    farcical    account    of    the    rising    in    King 
Henry  VI.,  Part  II.,  is,  of  course,  entirely  misleading. — See  the  author's 
True  Story  of  Jack  Cade. 

13 


178          Leaders  of  the  People          [1450 

present  discipline  was  loose  in  the  camp  at  Black- 
heath.1  "  As  good  was  Jack  Robin  as  John  at  the 
Noke,  for  all  were  as  high  as  pig's  feet ;  until  the 
time  that  they  should  come  and  speak  with  such 
states  and  messengers  as  were  sent  unto  them. 
Then  they  put  all  their  power  into  the  man  that  was 
named  captain  of  all  their  host." 

On  June  yth  the  king  was  at  Smithfield  with 
20,000  soldiers,  and  messengers  were  promptly 
despatched  to  Blackheath  to  know  the  meaning  of 
the  insurrection.  Cade  answered  by  showing  the 
petition  he  had  drawn  up,  and  mentioned  that  they 
had  assembled  "  to  redress  and  reform  the  wrongs 
that  were  done  in  the  realm,  and  to  withstand  the 
malice  of  them  that  were  destroyers  of  the  common 
profit,  and  to  correct  and  amend  the  defaults  of  them 
that  were  the  king's  chief  counsellors."  He  then 
sent  off  the  "  bill  of  complaints  "  to  the  king  and  to 
the  parliament  then  sitting  at  Westminster,  "and 
requested  to  have  answer  thereof  again,  but  answer 
he  had  none."  The  "  complaint  "  was  received  with 
contempt,  and  the  opinion  of  the  king's  counsellors 
was  that  "  such  proud  rebels  should  rather  be  sup- 
pressed and  tamed  with  violence  and  force  than  with 
fair  words  or  amicable  answer." 

Yet  "  the  complaint,"  which  consisted  of  fifteen 
articles,  was  no  revolutionary  document.  It  con- 
tained protests  against  the  royal  threat  to  lay  waste 
Kent  in  revenge  for  the  death  of  the  Duke  of 
Suffolk  ;  the  diversion  of  the  royal  revenue  raised 
by  heavy  taxation  to  "  other  men  "  ;  the  banishment 

1  See  the  letter  of  John  Payn  in  the  Paston  Letters.  But  Payn 
wrote  fifteen  years  afterwards,  and  seems  to  have  been  a  person  of  no 
very  scrupulous  honesty. 


1450]  Jack  Cade  179 

of  the  Duke  of  York  "  to  make  room  for  unworthy 
ministers  who  would  not  do  justice  by  law,  but 
demanded  bribes  and  gifts "  ;  the  purveyance  of 
goods  for  the  royal  household  without  payment ;  the 
arrest  and  imprisonment  on  false  charges  of  treason 
of  persons  whose  goods  and  lands  were  subsequently 
seized  by  the  king's  servants,  who  then  "either  com- 
passed their  deaths  or  kept  them  in  prison  while  they 
got  possession  of  their  property  by  royal  grant "  ; 
the  interference  with  the  old  right  of  free  election  of 
knights  of  the  shire  by  "  the  great  rulers  of  the 
country  sending  letters  to  enforce  their  tenants  and 
other  people  to  choose  other  persons  than  the 
common  will  is  to  elect  "  ;  the  misconduct  of  the  war 
in  France,  demanding  inquiry  and  the  punishment  by 
law  of  those  found  guilty.  Complaint  was  also 
made  of  various  local  grievances — the  insecurity  of 
property,  the  arbitrary  conduct  of  the  lords  of  the 
seaports,  the  extortion  in  taxation  owing  to  sheriffs 
and  under-sheriffs  farming  their  offices,  the  fines 
exacted  by  sheriffs  for  non-compliance  with  the 
orders  of  the  court  of  exchequer  (whose  writs  were 
sealed  with  green  wax)  when  no  summons  or  warn- 
ing had  been  given,  and  the  "  sore  expense  "  in- 
curred by  there  being  only  one  Court  of  Sessions  in 
the  whole  county. 

Five  "requests"  were  added  to  the  bill  of  com- 
plaints. These  expressed  the  desire  of  the  commons 
that  the  king  should  reign  "  like  a  king  royal  "  ;  that 
"  all  the  false  progeny  and  affinity  of  the  Duke 
of  Suffolk"  should  be  banished  from  the  king's 
presence  and  brought  to  trial,  and  the  Duke  of  York 
and  his  friends  included  in  the  royal  council  ;  that 
punishment  should  be  meted  out  to  those  responsible 


180          Leaders  of  the  People          [1450 

for  the  death  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  ;  that  the 
extortions  practised  daily  by  the  king's  servants  in 
the  taking  of  goods  from  the  people  should  cease  ; 
that  the  old  Statute  of  Labourers  for  keeping  down 
wages  should  be  abolished ;  and  that  the  "  false 
traitors"  and  "great  extortioners,"  Lord  Say  and 
Crowmer,  the  sheriff  of  Kent,  should  be  brought  low. 

In  brief,  the  charter  of  the  commons  of  Kent 
demanded  the  total  expulsion  of  all  Suffolk's 
ministers  and  relatives  from  public  service,  the 
return  of  the  Duke  of  York  and  his  party  to  power, 
the  suppression  of  the  bribery,  corruption,  and 
extortion  practised  by  the  sheriffs  and  government 
servants,  and  the  repeal  of  the  Statute  of  Labourers. 

It  would  have  been  well  if  Henry  had  heeded 
these  complaints  and  requests.  As  it  was  he  pushed 
on  to  Blackheath,  in  spite  of  murmuring  in  his  army, 
and  Cade,  unwilling  to  risk  a  battle,  and  knowing 
that  disaffection  was  at  work  in  London,  quietly 
withdrew  to  Sevenoaks.  There  was  no  spirit  in  the 
royal  troops  to  suppress  the  rising,  and  many 
favoured  the  Captain  of  Kent.  But  two  knights, 
Sir  Humfrey  Stafford  and  Sir  William  Stafford, 
kinsmen  of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham  and  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  and  men  of  some  military 
repute,  decided  to  pursue  the  rebels  and  advanced  to 
Sevenoaks  with  a  small  picked  body  of  soldiers. 
Their  defeat  was  complete.  Both  knights  were 
slain,  and  those  of  their  men  who  were  not  cut  to 
pieces  fled  from  the  battle,  or  joined  Cade's  host. 

The  result  of  this  disaster  to  the  royal  plans  was 
that  Henry  returned  to  London  with  an  army  that 
soon  melted  away,  or  broke  into  open  disorder. 
Many  of  the  nobles,  who  on  receipt  of  the  petition  of 


1450]  Jack  Cade  1 8 1 

the  commons  of  Kent  had  called  for  violent  measures 
against  the  rebels,  now  left  the  king,  and,  with  their 
retainers,  rode  to  their  country  estates.  Henry,  to 
appease  the  clamour  of  some  of  his  own  followers, 
ordered  the  arrest  of  Lord  Say-and-Sele,  the  king's 
treasurer,  and  of  Sheriff  Crowmer,  and  bade  officers 
take  them  to  the  Tower.  Parliament  was  dissolved, 
and  Cade  was  busy  in  Kent  gathering  reinforce- 
ments, and  doing  what  he  could  to  repair  locally 
the  mischief  of  Suffolk's  rule  before  proceeding  to 
London.1 

As  a  last  resource,  Henry  decided  to  treat  with 
Cade  by  ambassadors,  and  on  June  29th,  when  the 
commons  were  again  encamped  on  Blackheath,  came 
the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  and  Stafford,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  for  many  years  the  king's 
chancellor — a  gentle  old  man,  who,  if  he  had  made 
no  stand  against  the  misgovernment  himself,  was 
hardly  to  be  blamed — to  arrange,  if  possible,  a 
peaceful  settlement. 

The  conference  came  to  nothing,  for  neither 
Buckingham  nor  the  archbishop  could  promise  Cade 
any  positive  redress  of  grievances,  or  the  interview 
he  sought  with  the  king. 

"  These  lords  found  him  sober  in  talk,  wise  in 
reasoning,  arrogant  in  heart,  and  stiff  in  opinions  ; 
one  who  that  by  no  means  would  dissolve  his 
army,  except  the  king  in  person  would  come  to 
him,  and  assent  to  the  things  he  would  require " 
(Holinshed.) 

The  failure  of  the  mission  was  reported,  and 
Henry,  after  appointing  Lord  Scales  as  guardian  of 

1  A  special  act  of  parliament  was  passed  in  1452  to  cancel  all  that 
Cade  had  accomplished. 


1 82          Leaders  of  the  People          [1450 

the  prisoners  in  the  Tower,  hastily  fled  to  Kenil- 
worth,  although  the  lord  mayor  and  citizens  of 
London  promised  to  stand  by  him  if  he  would 
remain  in  the  city.  There  was  little  of  sovereignty 
in  Henry  VI.,  son  of  Henry  V.,  the  conqueror  of 
Agincourt.  Quiet  he  loved,  and  in  religious  exercises 
he  found  the  satisfaction  that  others  found  in  war 
and  statecraft. 

On  the  first  of  July  the  way  was  open  for  the 
commons  to  enter  London.  Suffolk,  Bishop 
Moleyns,  and  Bishop  Ayscough  had  all  been 
summarily  executed.  Lord  Say,  the  treasurer, 
alone  remained  of  the  discredited  ministers.  No 
opposition  was  offered  to  Cade  by  the  citizens  of 
London.  The  Common  Council  had  discussed  the 
rising,  and  at  the  Guildhall  only  one  dissentient 
voice  had  been  raised  to  the  admission  of  the 
Captain  of  Kent  to  the  city.  One  Home,  a  stock- 
fishmonger  and  alderman,  alone  objected  to  any 
recognition  of  the  unlawful  assembly  of  the  com- 
mons, and  he  was  sent  to  Newgate  prison  for  safety, 
and  on  Cade's  entry  fined  500  marks  for  his  daring 
speech. 

Negotiations  had  been  opened  between  the  City 
Council  and  the  commons  while  the  latter  were  at 
Blackheath,  and  Thomas  Cocke  (or  Cooke),1  a  past 
warden  of  the  Drapers'  Company,  acted  as  the 
mutual  friend  of  both  parties.  From  Cocke  the 
corporation  learnt  of  Cade's  purposes,  and  that  the 
city  stood  in  no  danger  from  the  rising  ;  and  it  was 

1  Cocke  was  a  well-known  supporter  of  Henry  VI.  and  a  man  of  note. 
He  was  sheriff  of  London  1453,  alderman  in  1456,  and  mayor  and  M.P. 
1462-3.  Knighted  by  Henry  in  1465,  he  fell  from  his  high  estate  when 
Edward  IV.  was  king-,  and  languished  in  prison  on  a  charge  of  high 
treason,  only  escaping  with  his  life  on  payment  of  £8,000. 


1450]  Jack  Cade  183 

Cocke  who  carried  instructions  from  Cade  to  the 
wealthy  foreign  merchants,  requiring  them  to  furnish 
horses,  arms  and  money  for  his  army. 

"Ye  shall  charge  all  Lombards  and  strangers, 
being  merchants,  Genoese,  Venetians,  Florentines  and 
others  this  day  to  draw  them  together  :  and  to  ordain 
for  us,  the  captain,  twelve  [sets  of]  harness  complete, 
of  the  best  fashion,  twenty-four  brigandines,  twelve 
battle-axes,  twelve  glaves,  six  horses  with  saddle 
and  bridle  completely  harnessed,  and  1,000  marks  of 
ready  money." 

So  ran  the  summons,  which  was  duly  obeyed.1 
For  Cade  had  added  the  stern  warning  that  "  if  this 
demand  be  not  observed  and  done,  we  shall  have  the 
heads  of  as  many  as  we  can  get  of  them." 

The  corporation  had  really  no  choice  but  to  wel- 
come Cade.  Kings  and  nobles  had  fled,  and  here 
was  the  Captain  of  Kent  with  50,000  men  come  to 
do  justice  at  their  gates.  London  had  suffered  as 
badly  as  any  place  from  the  misgovernment  of  the 
country,  and  it  was  plain  the  commons  of  Kent  were 
no  army  of  maurauders,  for  no  complaint  had  been 
heard  of  their  ill  doing  in  Kent,  and  their  captain 
had  treated  with  full  civility  the  Duke  of  Bucking- 
ham and  Archbishop  Stafford. 

So  the  keys  of  the  city  were  presented  to  Cade, 
and  at  five  o'clock  on  the  2nd  of  July  the  Captain  of 
Kent,  mounted  on  a  good  horse,  rode  across  London 
Bridge,  followed  by  all  his  army.  In  Cannon  Street, 
in  the  presence  of  Sir  John  Chalton,  the  Lord 
Mayor,  and  a  great  multitude  of  people,  Cade  laid 

1  "  What  answer  to  this  demand  was  returned  I  find  not,  but  like  it  is 
the  same  was  granted  and  performed  ;  for  I  find  not  the  said  captain  and 
Kentishmen  at  their  being-  in  the  city  to  have  hurt  any  stranger." — 
Stow. 


184          Leaders  of  the  People          [1450 

down  his  sword  on  the  old  London  Stone  and  de- 
clared proudly,  "  Now  is  Mortimer  lord  of  this  city." 
At  nightfall  he  returned  to  his  headquarters,  the 
White  Hart,  a  famous  inn  in  South wark,  and  next 
morning  was  betimes  in  the  city.  That  day  sentence 
was  passed  on  Lord  Say-and-Seleand  on  his  son-in- 
law,  Sheriff  Crowmer.  They  were  removed  from  the 
Tower  by  Cade's  orders,  taken  to  the  Guildhall, 
tried  and  condemned  for  "divers  treasons,"  and  for 
"certain  extortions,"  and  executed  forthwith.  Say 
was  beheaded  at  the  standard  in  Cheapside,  and 
Crowmer  at  Mile  End,  and  so  bitter  was  the  public 
feeling  against  these  two  men,  and  so  fierce  the 
popular  hatred,  that  their  heads  were  carried  on 
poles  through  the  city,  and  made  to  kiss  in  ghastly 
embrace  before  being  placed  on  London  Bridge. 

These,  with  a  third  man  named  John  Bailey,  who 
was  hanged  with  Cade's  permission  for  being  a 
necromancer  and  a  dabbler  in  magic  and  the  black 
arts,  were  the  only  persons  put  to  death  while  Mor- 
timer was  lord  of  the  city.  At  Southwark,  where 
the  commons  were  now  encamped,  as  at  Blackheath, 
theft  in  the  popular  army  was  treated  as  a  capital 
offence,  and  two  or  three  "  lawless  men "  were 
hanged.  It  was  inevitable  if  discipline  and  good 
order  were  to  be  obtained  in  so  vast  a  company  that 
punishment  should  follow  sharp  and  swift  on  all  who 
brought  discredit  on  the  rising. 

Lord  Say  and  Sheriff  Crowmer  being  dead,  the 
city  fathers  saw  no  further  purpose  in  Cade's  lord- 
ship, and  they  dreaded  being  called  upon  to  contri- 
bute to  the  support  of  his  army,  for  they  knew  that 
Cade  needed  money  for  his  men.  To  the  everlasting 
credit  of  the  commons  no  charge  was  laid  against 


1450]  Jack  Cade  185 

them  of  riot  or  disorder.  The  city  was  in  their 
hands  for  three  days,  yet  no  harm  befell  the  citizens. 
On  their  captain  alone  has  blame  fallen  for  the 
events  of  those  days  in  July. 

The  difficulties  of  the  man  were  immense.  He 
had  rendered  no  mean  service  to  the  state  by  calling 
attention  to  the  ills  that  plagued  the  country,  and 
proposing  remedies.  He  had  roused  a  large  body  of 
Englishmen  to  demand  a  better  government,  and  by 
the  sharp  method  of  the  times  he  had  got  rid  of  a 
bad  minister  and  a  corrupt  sheriff,  so  that  public  life 
was  at  least  the  healthier  for  the  deliverance  from  two 
of  its  oppressors.  And  now  he  had  this  army  of  50,000 
men,  all  needing  food  and  shelter — an  orderly,  well- 
disciplined  body,  no  mob  of  mercenaries — and  the 
city  of  London,  with  all  its  wealth,  gave  him  nothing. 

Cade  had  to  get  supplies.  The  commons  of  Kent 
could  not  live  on  the  good  will  of  the  London  people. 
Their  captain  was  forced  to  levy  toll  where  he  could. 
At  present  all  he  had  received  was  the  tribute  from 
the  foreign  merchants  and  500  marks  from  the  fish- 
monger Home. 

On  July  3rd,  the  night  of  Say's  execution,  Cade 
supped  with  Philip  Malpas,  Cocke's  father-in-law. 
Malpas  was  one  of  Suffolk's  party,  a  King  Henry's 
man,  unpopular  in  the  city,  and  though  an  alderman 
and  a  draper,  an  expelled  member  of  the  city  council. 
Warned  by  Cocke,  Malpas  got  rid  of  his  valuables 
before  Cade  arrived.  But  the  Captain  of  Kent 
found  certain  jewels  belonging  to  the  Duke  of  York 
in  the  house,  and  these  he  carried  off.1 

1  When,  by  order  of  the  Privy  Council,  the  Exchequer  seized  all 
Cade's  goods,  these  jewels  were  sold  with  the  rest.  They  fetched  £i  14, 
and  a  payment  of  .£86  73.  was  subsequently  made  to  the  Duke  of  York. 
So  the  crown  made  some  profit  on  the  transaction,  but  Malpas  was 
unrecompensed. — See  Devon's  Exchequer  Rolls. 


1 86          Leaders  of  the  People          [1450 

The  following  night  Cade  supped  with  a  merchant 
named  Curtis  (Ghirstis  according  to  Fabyan,  Girste 
according  to  Stow)  in  the  parish  of  St.  Margaret 
Pattens  and  before  he  left  insisted  on  a  contribution 
to  the  war  chest.  Curtis  paid,  but  he  resented 
bitterly  the  abuse  of  his  hospitality.  It  seemed  to 
him,  as  it  seemed  to  his  fellow  merchants  to  whom 
he  told  the  tale  of  his  wrongs,  sheer  robbery,  and 
the  following  morning  (Sunday,  July  5th),  while 
Cade  rested  quietly  at  the  White  Hart  in  South- 
wark,  the  city  fathers  were  busy  shaking  their  heads 
over  the  business,  and  grave  anxiety  filled  their 
minds.  This  might  be  but  the  beginning  of  pillage  ; 
there  were  always  materials  in  London  for  a  riot, 
apart  from  Cade's  army. 

"  And  for  this  the  hearts  of  the  citizens  fell  from 
him,  and  every  thrifty  man  was  afraid  to  be  served 
in  like  wise,  for  there  was  many  a  man  in  London 
that  awaited  and  would  fain  have  seen  a  common 
robbery"  (Stow.)1 

In  the  course  of  the  day  mayor  and  corporation 
were  in  consultation  with  Lord  Scales,  the  Governor 
of  the  Tower,  with  the  result  that  decision  was  made 
to  prevent  Cade  and  the  commons  from  re-entering 
the  city.  London  Bridge  was  at  once  seized  and 
fortified  by  the  citizens,  and  Matthew  Gough,  a  dis- 
tinguished soldier  in  the  French  wars,  was  placed  in 
command. 

Cade,  knowing  nothing  of  the  hostility  he  had 
created,  took  his  ease  that  day — it  was  the  last 
peaceful  Sabbath  he  was  to  know.  Towards  even- 

1  "  Whereof  he  lost  the  people's  favour  and  hearts.  For  it  was  to  be 
thought  if  he  had  not  executed  that  robbery  he  might  have  gone  far  and 
brought  his  purpose  to  good  effect." — Fabyan. 


1450]  Jack  Cade  187 

ing  he  gave  orders  for  the  King's  Bench  and  Mar- 
shalsea  prisons  to  be  opened,  and  their  inmates — for 
the  most  part  victims  of  official  extortion  and  injus- 
tice— to  be  released.  This  was  done,  and  certain 
"lawless  men  "convicted  of  disobedience  were  haled 
off  to  be  hanged ;  to  the  end  there  was  no  relaxing 
of  discipline. 

Then  came  word  that  the  passage  of  London 
Bridge  was  stopped,  and  the  right  of  entry  to  the 
city  barred  against  the  commons  as  against  a  foe. 
Cade  took  this  as  a  declaration  of  war,  of  the  civil 
war  he  had  done  his  best  to  prevent,  and  sallied  out 
to  force  an  entrance.  At  nine  o'clock  the  battle 
began  on  the  bridge,  and  all  through  the  short 
summer  night  it  raged,  neither  side  effecting  victory. 
"  For  some  time  the  Londoners  were  beat  back  to 
the  stulpes  at  St.  Magnus  corner,  and  suddenly 
again  the  rebels  were  repulsed  and  driven  back  to 
the  stulpes  at  South wark."  It  was  not  till  nine 
o'clock  on  Monday  morning  that  the  commons, 
wearied  and  disheartened,  fell  back  from  the  fray, 
and  Cade  understood  that  the  attack  had  failed,  and 
that  for  the  first  time  since  the  assembling  of  the 
people  on  Blackheath,  at  the  end  of  May,  a  check 
had  been  given  to  the  democratic  movement.  A 
hasty  truce  was  settled  between  Cade  and  the  mayor, 
that  while  the  truce  lasted  the  commons  should  not 
cross  into  London  nor  the  citizens  into  Southwark. 
Cardinal  Kemp,  Archbishop  of  York,  the  king's 
chancellor,  who  with  old  Archbishop  Stafford  had 
been  left  undisturbed  in  the  Tower  since  the  king's 
ignominious  flight,  immediately  decided  that  the 
time  had  come  to  arrange  a  settlement  with  the 
Captain  of  Kent. 


1 88          Leaders  of  the  People          [1450 

Kemp  sent  messengers  that  day  to  the  White 
Hart,  asking  Cade  to  meet  the  representatives  of  the 
king,  "to  the  end  that  the  civil  commotions  and  dis- 
turbances might  cease  and  tranquility  be  restored," 
and  Cade  consented. 

Kemp,  who  had  himself  presided  at  the  trial  and 
condemnation  of  Suffolk,  brought  to  the  conference, 
which  was  held  in  the  church  of  St.  Margaret, 
Southwark,1  on  July  7th,  Archbishop  Stafford  and 
William  Waynfleet,  Bishop  of  Winchester.  The 
chancellor,  bent  on  making  peace,  also  brought 
pardons  to  all  concerned,  duly  signed  and  sealed. 
He  listened  courteously  to  Cade's  "  complaints  "  and 
"  requests,"  received  the  petition,  promised  it  should 
have  the  full  consideration  of  parliament,  and  then 
announced  a  full  pardon  to  all  who  should  return  home. 

The  proposals  of  the  bishops  won  the  general 
approval  of  the  commons.  There  was  nothing  to  be 
gained,  it  seemed,  by  remaining  in  arms,  now  they 
had  won  a  promise  that  their  charter  should  come 
before  parliament. 

Cade  alone  hesitated.  What  if  parliament  should 
disavow  these  "  pardons,"  and  the  commons  be 
treated  as  the  peasants  were  treated  when  they 
trusted  a  king's  word?  He  asked  for  the  endorse- 
ment of  his  own  pardon,  and  the  pardons  of  his 
followers,  by  parliament  before  his  army  dispersed. 
Chancellor  Kemp  explained  that  this  was  impossible, 
because  parliament  was  dissolved.  The  people  were 
satisfied  with  the  cardinal's  word.  The  rising  was 
at  an  end. 

1  This  church  has  long  been  pulled  down.  It  was  absorbed  into  St. 
Saviour's  parish  the  following'  year.  St.  Margaret's  Hill  is  now  part  of 
High  Street,  Borough,  and  the  present  St.  George's  Church  stands  near 
the  site  of  old  St.  Margaret's  Church. 


1450]  Jack  Cade  189 

The  following  day  the  bulk  of  the  commons 
departed  from  Southwark  for  their  farms  and 
cottages  in  Kent  and  Surrey  and  Sussex.  Cade 
watched  them  go.  His  own  mind  was  made  up. 
Not  till  parliament  should  give  him  a  pardon  of 
indisputable  legality  would  he  lay  down  his  arms. 
With  a  small  band  of  followers  he  set  off  for 
Rochester,  sending  what  goods  and  provisions  he 
had  by  water. 

The  rising  was  at  an  end,  and  nothing  more  was 
heard  in  parliament,  or  elsewhere,  of  the  famous 
charter  of  "complaints  "  and  "requests." 

With  the  break-up  of  the  insurgent  army,  the 
government  woke  to  activity.  Alexander  I  den  was 
appointed  sheriff  of  Kent,  and  marrying  Crowmer's 
widow,  subsequently  gained  considerable  profit. 
Within  a  week  the  king's  writ  and  proclamation, 
declaring  John  Cade  a  false  traitor,  was  posted 
throughout  the  countryside,  and  Cade,  defeated  in 
an  attempt  to  get  possession  of  Queenborough 
Castle,  was  a  fugitive  with  the  reward  of  1,000 
marks  on  his  head,  alive  or  dead,  and  with  Sheriff 
I  den  in  hot  pursuit. 

Near  Heathfield,  in  Sussex,  I  den  came  up  with 
his  prey,  early  on  Monday,  July  i3th. 

Cade  died  fighting.  A  broken  man,  worn  and 
famished,  friendless  and  alone,  he  still  had  his 
sword.  The  spirit  of  Mortimer,  Captain  of  Kent, 
flickered  up  in  the  presence  of  his  enemies — it  were 
better  to  die  sword  in  hand  fighting  for  freedom 
than  to  perish  basely  by  the  hangman.  So  Cade 
fought  his  last  fight  in  the  Sussex  garden,  and  fell 
mortally  wounded,  overpowered  by  the  sheriff  and 
his  men. 


190          Leaders  of  the  People          [1450 

In  all  haste  Iden  sent  off  the  dead  body  to 
London  ;  it  was  identified  by  the  hostess  of  the 
White  Hart,  and  three  days  later  the  head  was 
stuck  on  London  Bridge.  The  body  was  quartered 
and  portions  sent  to  Blackheath,  Norwich,  Salisbury, 
and  Gloucester,  for  public  exposure.  The  sheriffs  of 
London,  upon  whom  the  gruesome  task  fell  of 
despatching  these  remains,  complained  bitterly  of 
the  cost  of  this  proceeding,  "  because  that  hardly  any 
persons  durst  nor  would  take  upon  them  the  carriage 
for  doubt  of  their  lives."1 

Iden  got  his  1,000  marks  reward,  besides  getting 
the  governorship  of  Rochester  Castle,  at  a  salary  of 
^36  per  annum. 

Cade  was  "attainted  of  treason  "  by  act  of  parlia- 
ment, and  all  his  goods,  lands,  and  tenements  made 
forfeit  to  the  crown.  A  year  later  another  act  of 
parliament  made  void  all  that  had  been  done  by 
Cade's  authority  during  the  rising. 

In  January,  1451,  Henry  VI.  went  into  Kent  with 
his  justices,  and  this  royal  visitation  was  known  as 
the  harvest  of  heads ;  for  in  spite  of  Cardinal 
Kemp's  pardons,  twenty-six  men  of  Canterbury  and 
Rochester  implicated  in  the  rising  were  hanged. 

So  the  last  echoes  of  the  rising  died  away,  and 
corruption  and  misgovernment  remained.  But  the 
commons  of  Kent  and  their  captain  had  done  what 
they  could,  and  in  the  only  way  that  seemed  possible, 
to  get  justice  done,  and  their  failure  was  without 
dishonour. 


1  Acts  of  Privy  Council ',  1451. 


Sir   Thomas   More   and    the 
Freedom  of  Conscience 


AUTHORITIES  :  William  Roper — Life  of  Sir  Thomas 
More,  1626 ;  Harpsfield — Life  of  More  (Harleian 
MSS.);  Stapleton — Ires  T/iomce,  1588;  Cresacre 
More — Life  of  More,  1627;  Erasmus  —  Epistolae 
(Leyden,  1706);  Sir  James  Mackintosh — Life  of  More, 
1844;  Campbell — Lives  of  the  Chancellors;  Foss — 
Lives  of  the  Judges ;  Calendar  of  State  Papers — 
Henry  VIII. ,  edited  by  Dr.  Brewer  and  Dr.  Gairdner 
(Rolls  Series) ;  Morels  English  Works,  edited  by 
William  Rastell  ;  Rev.  T.  E.  Bridgett — Life  of  Blessed 
John  Fisher,  and  Life  and  Writings  of  Sir  Thomas 
More,  1891. 


SIR    THOMAS    MORE 

(From  the  Drawing  by  Hans  Holbein.) 


SIR  THOMAS  MORE  AND  THE 
FREEDOM  OF  CONSCIENCE 


DID  Nature  ever  frame  a  sweeter,  happier 
character    than    that    of    More  ?  "  —  so 
Erasmus  wrote  in   1498,  when  Thomas 
More  was  twenty,  and  Erasmus,  recently 
come  to   England,  some  ten  years  older.       It  was 
at   the   beginning   of  their  friendship,  a  friendship 
that  was  to  last  unbroken  till  death,1  and  More  had 
then  passed  from  the  household  of  Cardinal  Morton 
to   Oxford,   and  from    Oxford  to   Lincoln's  Inn,  to 
take  up  his  father's  calling  and  follow  the  law  as  a 
barrister. 

Twenty  years  later  Erasmus,  writing  at  length  to 
Ulrich  von  Hutten,  gives  us  a  portrait  of  More  in 
full  manhood.  Temperance,  simplicity,  human 
affection,  good  humour,  independence  of  mind  — 
these  qualities  are  conspicuous. 

"  I  never  saw  anyone  so  indifferent  about  food. 
Until  he  was  a  young  man  he  delighted  in  drinking 
water,  but  that  was  natural  to  him.  Yet,  that  he 
might  not  seem  to  be  singular  or  unsociable,  he 
would  conceal  his  temperance  from  his  guests  by 

1  "  In  the  interests  of  truth,  I  must  declare  at  the  outset  that  I  cannot 
find  the  very  slightest  foundation  for  the  assertion  of  Stapleton,  copied 
by  Cresacre  More  and  many  others,  that  in  the  course  of  time  their 
friendship  cooled.  Abundant  proofs  of  the  contrary  will  appear."  —  Rev. 
T.  E.  Bridgett,  Life  and  Writings  of  Sir  Thomas  More. 

193  14 


194          Leaders  of  the  People         1 1529- 

drinking  the  lightest  beer,  or  often  pure  water,  out 
of  a  pewter  vessel." 

"He  prefers  milk  diet  and  fruits,  and  is  especially 
fond  of  eggs.  He  would  rather  eat  corned  beef  and 
coarse  bread  than  what  are  called  delicacies." 

"  He  likes  a  simple  dress,  using  neither  silk  nor 
purple  nor  chains  of  gold — except  on  state  occasions. 
It  is  wonderful  how  careless  he  is  of  all  that  cere- 
mony which  most  men  identify  with  politeness. 
He  neither  requires  it  from  others  nor  is  anxious 
to  use  it  himself,  though  when  it  is  necessary,  at 
interviews  or  banquets,  he  knows  how  to  employ 
it.  But  he  thinks  it  unmanly  to  waste  time  over 
such  trifles." 

"  He  seems  born  and  fashioned  for  friendship,  and 
is  a  most  faithful  and  enduring  friend.  He  is  easy  of 
access  to  all ;  but  if  he  chances  to  get  familiar  with 
one  whose  vices  will  not  brook  correction,  rather 
than  a  sudden  breaking  off,  he  gradually  relaxes  the 
intimacy  and  quietly  drops  it.  He  abhors  games  of 
tennis,  dice,  cards,  and  the  like,  by  which  most 
gentlemen  kill  time.  Though  he  is  rather  too  negli- 
gent of  his  own  interests,  no  one  is  more  diligent  in 
behalf  of  his  friends.  So  polite,  and  so  sweet- 
mannered  is  he  in  company,  that  no  one  is  too 
melancholy  to  be  cheered  by  him.  Since  boyhood 
he  has  always  so  delighted  in  merriment  that  it  seems 
to  be  part  of  his  nature  ;  yet  his  merriment  is  never 
turned  into  buffoonery." 

"  No  one  is  less  led  by  the  opinions  of  the  crowd, 
yet  no  one  is  less  eccentric." 

The  friendship  of  More  and  Erasmus  had  ripened 
in  those  twenty  years.  In  More's  house,  and  at  his 
instigation,  Erasmus  had  written  the  Praise  of 


-1535]  Sir  Thomas  More  195 

Folly?  and  the  great  scholar  watched  with  warm 
interest  the  famous  career  and  the  brilliant  character 
of  the  man  he  loved  so  heartily. 

More  was  already  high  in  Henry  VIII.'s  favour 
when  Erasmus  could  write  that  no  one  was  less  led  by 
the  opinions  of  the  crowd,  and  more  than  once  his 
independence  and  courage  of  mind  had  been  proved 
in  the  twenty  years  that  had  passed. 

Drawn  at  first  to  the  monastic  life,  More  had 
spent  four  years  (1500-1504)  with  the  Carthusians 
in  Smithfield,  "  frequenting  daily  their  spiritual 
exercises,  but  without  any  vow."  Then  it  is  plain 
to  him  that  his  vocation  is  not  the  priesthood,  but 
marriage  and  public  life,  and  he  leaves  the  Charter- 
house, and  in  1505  is  married  and  in  Parliament.2 
But  all  his  life  the  devotion  to  religion,  and  to  the 
services  of  the  Church,  remain  in  More,  and  he  is 
ascetic  in  the  mortifications  of  the  body  till  the  spirit 
and  the  will  ride  supreme. 

In  the  House  of  Commons  More  stood  out  against 
the  exactions  of  Henry  VII.,  and  at  once  fell  under 
the  king's  displeasure. 

M  ore's  son-in-law,  Roper,  tells  the  story  : 

"In  the  time  of  King  Henry  the  Seventh,  More 
was  made  a  burgess  of  the  Parliament  wherein  was 
demanded  by  the  king  (as  I  have  heard  reported) 
about  three-fifteenths,  for  the  marriage  of  his  eldest 

1  "  Indeed,  it  was  he  who  pushed  me  to  write   the  Praise  of  Folly, 
that  is  to  say,  he  made  a  camel  frisk."  —  Erasmus  to  Ulrich  von  Hutten, 


"  "  He  had  a  purpose  to  be  a  priest,  yet  God  had  allotted  him  for 
another  estate,  not  to  live  solitary,  but  that  he  might  be  a  pattern  to 
married  men  :  how  they  should  carefully  bring  up  their  children,  how 
dearly  they  should  love  their  wives,  how  they  should  employ  their 
endeavour  wholly  for  the  good  of  their  country,  yet  excellently  perform 
the  virtues  of  religious  men,  as  piety,  charity,  humility,  obedience  and 
conjugal  chastity."  —  Cresacre  More. 


196          Leaders  of  the  People          [1529- 

daughter,  that  then  should  be  Scottish  Queen  ;  at 
the  last  debating  whereof  he  made  such  arguments 
and  reasons  against,  that  the  king's  demands  were 
thereby  overthrown.  So  that  one  of  the  king's  privy 
chamber  being  present  thereat,  brought  word  to  the 
king  out  of  the  Parliament  house  that  a  beardless  boy 
had  disappointed  all  his  purpose.  Whereupon  the 
king,  conceiving  great  indignation  towards  him, 
could  not  be  satisfied  until  he  had  some  way 
revenged  it.  And  forasmuch  as  he,  nothing  have, 
nothing  could  lose,  his  Grace  devised  a  causeless 
quarrel  against  his  father,  keeping  him  in  the  Tower 
till  he  had  made  him  pay  a  hundred  pounds  fine. 
Had  not  the  king  soon  after  died,  Sir 
Thomas  More  was  determined  to  have  gone  over 
sea,  thinking  that  being  in  the  king's  indignation,  he 
could  not  live  in  England  without  great  danger." 

The  grant  from  parliament  to  the  king  was  reduced 
from  ,£113,000  to  ,£30,000  by  More's  action  ;  and  if 
this  action  brought  royal  anger,  it  won  for  More  the 
confidence  of  his  fellow-citizens  in  London,  so  that 
we  see  him  in  the  second  year  of  Henry  VIII.  under- 
sheriff  for  the  city,  and  according  to  Erasmus  and 
Roper,  the  most  popular  lawyer  of  the  day.  With 
all  his  legal  business,  and  good  income,  More  is 
never  anxious  after  money.  "While  he  was  still 
dependent  on  his  fees,  he  gave  to  all  true  and 
friendly  counsel,  considering  their  interests  rather 
than  his  own ;  he  persuaded  many  to  settle  with 
their  opponents  as  the  cheaper  course.  If  he  could 
not  induce  them  to  act  in  that  manner — for  some 
men  delight  in  litigation — he  would  still  indicate  the 
method  that  was  least  expensive."1 

1  Erasmus  to  Ulrich  von  Hutten. 


-!535]  Sir  Thomas  More  197 

More's  rising  reputation  was  bound  to  attract  the 
notice  of  Henry  VIII.,  for  the  king  was  alert  in  the 
early  years  of  his  reign  to  get  good  men  at  the 
court,  and  Wolsey,  who  had  become  chancellor  on 
Archbishop  Warham's  retirement  in  1515,  was 
anxious  to  enlist  More  in  the  royal  service.  The 
court  had  no  attractions  for  More,  his  embassies  to 
Flanders  and  Calais,  to  settle  trade  disputes  and 
difficulties  with  France,  wearied  him,  and  in  1516  he 
was  engaged  in  finishing  his  Utopia.  According 
to  Roper,  it  was  More's  independence  of  mind  that 
made  the  king  force  office  at  court  upon  him.  A 
ship  belonging  to  the  pope,  which  had  put  into 
Southampton,  was  claimed  by  Henry  as  a  forfeiture. 
More  argued  the  case  so  clearly  that  the  commis- 
sioners decided  in  the  pope's  favour,  and  the  king  at 
once  declared  he  must  have  More  in  his  service. 

Then  for  the  next  twelve  years  Sir  Thomas  More 
enjoyed  the  royal  favour  and  friendship.  His  pro- 
motion was  rapid.  Secretary  of  state,  master  of 
requests  when  the  king  was  travelling,  privy  coun- 
cilor, under-treasurer,  or  chancellor  of  the  ex- 
chequer— all  these  offices  were  filled.  In  1521  More 
was  knighted,  in  1523  he  was  speaker  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  and  in  1525  chancellor  of  the  Duchy 
of  Lancaster. 

Erasmus  writes  to  Ulrich  von  Hutten  in  1519  in 
praise  of  More's  public  work  :  "  In  serious  matters 
no  man's  advice  is  more  prized,  and  when  the  king 
wishes  for  recreation  no  man's  conversation  is  more 
entertaining.  Often  there  are  matters  deep  and  in- 
volved that  demand  a  grave  and  prudent  judge, 
and  More  unravels  these  questions  in  a  way  that 
gives  satisfaction  to  both  sides.  Yet  no  one  has 


198          Leaders  of  the  People         h529- 

ever  prevailed  on  him  to  receive  a  gift  for  his  de- 
cision. Happy  that  commonwealth  where  kings 
appoint  such  officials !  No  pride  has  come  to  him 
with  his  high  estate.  With  all  the  weight  of  state 
affairs  he  remembers  his  old  friends,  and  returns 
from  time  to  time  to  the  books  he  loves  so  well. 
Whatever  influence  has  come  to  him  with  his  high 
office,  whatever  favour  he  enjoys  with  his  wealthy 
king,  he  uses  all  for  the  good  of  the  state  and  for 
the  assistance  of  his  friends.  Ever  fond  of  conferring 
benefits  and  wonderfully  prone  to  pity,  his  disposi- 
tion has  grown  with  his  power  of  indulging  it.  Some 
he  helps  with  money,  to  others  he  gives  protection, 
and  others  he  recommends  for  promotion.  When 
he  can  help  in  no  other  way  he  does  it  by  his  advice : 
no  one  is  sent  away  dejected.  You  might  well  say 
that  he  had  been  appointed  the  public  guardian  of 
the  distressed  and  needy." 

If  the  cares  of  state  did  not  cut  off  Sir  Thomas 
More  from  assisting  old  acquaintances,  they  made 
great  inroads  into  the  home  life  he  loved  so  well. 
He  had  married  again  on  the  death  of  his  first  wife, 
and  his  letters  to  his  children,  especally  to  his  "  most 
dear  daughter,  Margaret" — Roper's  wife — are  full 
of  tenderness.  He  is  anxious  about  the  education  of 
his  children,  and  rejoices  that  his  daughter  shares 
his  love  for  books.  We  find  him  writing  to  Mar- 
garet Roper  just  after  her  marriage  in  1522  : — 

"  I  am  therefore  delighted  to  read  that  you  have 
made  up  your  mind  to  give  yourself  diligently  to 
philosophy,  and  to  make  up  by  your  earnestness  in 
future  for  what  you  have  lost  in  the  past  by  neglect. 
My  darling  Margaret,  I  indeed  have  never  found 
you  idling,  and  your  unusual  learning  in  almost 


-1535]  Sir  Thomas  More  199 

every  kind  of  literature  shows  that  you  have  been 
making  active  progress.  So  I  take  your  words  as 
an  example  of  the  great  modesty  that  makes  you 
prefer  to  accuse  yourself  falsely  of  sloth  rather  than 
to  boast  of  your  diligence,  unless  your  meaning  is 
that  you  will  give  yourself  so  earnestly  to  study  that 
your  past  history  will  seem  like  indolence  by  com- 
parison. .  .  .  Though  I  earnestly  hope  that  you  will 
devote  the  rest  of  your  life  to  medical  science  and 
sacred  literature,  so  that  you  may  be  well  furnished 
for  the  whole  scope  of  human  life,  which  is  to  have 
a  healthy  soul  in  a  healthy  body,  and  I  know  that 
you  have  already  laid  the  foundations  of  these  studies, 
and  there  will  be  always  opportunity  to  continue  the 
building  ;  yet  I  am  of  opinion  that  you  may  with 
great  advantage  give  some  years  of  your  yet  flourish- 
ing youth  to  humane  letters  and  liberal  studies.  .  .  . 
It  would  be  a  delight,  my  dear  Margaret,  to  me  to 
converse  long  with  you  on  these  matters,  but  I  have 
just  been  interrupted  and  called  away  by  the  ser- 
vants, who  have  brought  in  supper.  I  must  have 
regard  to  others,  else  to  sup  is  not  so  sweet  as  to  talk 
with  you."1 

The  close  friend  of  Erasmus  and  Dean  Colet,  an 
accepted  champion  of  the  New  Learning,  More 
was  naturally  enthusiastic  for  education — for  girls  as 
for  boys.  He  had  written  to  Gunnell,  for  a  time  the 
tutor  of  his  family  : — 

1  "  It  is  clear  that  Sir  Thomas  had  a  little  Utopia  of  his  own  in  his 
family.  He  was  making1  an  experiment  in  education,  and  he  was  de- 
lig-hted  with  its  success.  The  fame  of  his  learned  daughters  became 
European  through  the  praises  of  Erasmus,  and  was  so  great  in  England 
that  in  1529,  when  they  were  all  married  ladies,  they  were  invited  by 
the  king  to  hold  a  kind  of  philosophical  tournament  in  his  presence. 
.  .  .  More  will  ever  stand  foremost  in  the  ranks  of  the  defenders  of 
female  culture."  —  Rev.  T.  E.  Bridgett,  Life  and  Writings  of  Sir 
Thomas  More. 


2oo          Leaders  of  the  People         [1529- 

"  Though  I  prefer  learning,  joined  with  virtue,  to 
all  the  treasures  of  kings,  yet  renown  for  learning, 
when  it  is  not  united  with  a  good  life,  is  nothing  else 
than  splendid  and  notorious  infamy  :  this  would  be 
especially  the  case  in  a  woman.  .  .  .  Since  erudition 
in  woman  is  a  new  thing  and  a  reproach  to  the  sloth 
of  men,  many  will  gladly  assail  it  and  impute  to 
literature  what  is  really  the  fault  of  nature,  thinking 
from  the  vices  of  the  learned  to  get  their  own 
ignorance  esteemed  as  virtue.  On  the  other  hand 
if  a  woman  (and  this  I  desire  and  hope  with  you  as 
the  teacher  for  all  my  daughters)  to  eminent  virtue 
should  add  an  outwork  of  even  moderate  skill  in 
literature,  I  think  she  will  have  more  real  profit  than 
if  she  had  obtained  the  riches  of  Crcesus  and  the 
beauty  of  Helen." 

In  this  letter  More  goes  on  to  speak  of  the  profit 
of  learning  and  the  happiness  of  those  who  give 
themselves  to  it — "  possessing  solid  joy  they  will 
neither  be  puffed  up  by  the  empty  praises  of  men  nor 
dejected  by  evil  tongues." 

"  These  I  consider  the  genuine  fruits  of  learning, 
and  though  I  admit  that  all  literary  men  do  not 
possess  them,  I  would  maintain  that  those  who  give 
themselves  to  study  with  such  views  (avoiding  the 
precipices  of  pride  and  haughtiness,  walking  in  the 
pleasant  meadows  of  modesty,  not  dazzled  at  the 
sight  of  gold)  will  easily  attain  their  end  and  become 
perfect.  Nor  do  I  think  that  the  harvest  will  be 
much  affected  whether  it  is  a  man  or  a  woman  who 
sows  the  field.  They  both  have  the  same  human 
nature,  which  reason  differentiates  from  those  of 
beasts  ;  both  therefore  are  equally  suited  for  those 
studies  for  which  reason  is  perfectioned,  and  becomes 


-1535]  Sir  Thomas  More  201 

fruitful  like  a  ploughed  land  on  which  the  seed  of 
good  lessons  has  been  sown." 

This  strong  love  for  wise  learning,  laying  emphasis 
on  a  complete  education — the  training  in  virtue  no 
less  than  the  knowledge  of  letters — had  its  roots  in 
More's  character.  The  "  genuine  fruits  of  learning  " 
ripen  in  his  life  and  death.  His  wide  toleration, 
which  will  blame  no  man  for  not  taking  the  path  he 
trod  to  martyrdom,  is  coupled  inextricably  with  a 
refinement  of  conscience  that  cannot  be  sullied  by  a 
denial  of  his  faith.  The  freedom  of  conscience 
Thomas  More  claimed  for  himself  he  most  willingly 
allows  to  others.  Just  as  the  education  he  valued  for 
himself  he  extends  to  all  his  children. 

Standing  largely  aloof  from  the  violent  contro- 
versies Luther  had  started,  hating  the  bitter 
intolerance  and  savage  abuse  of  theological  strife, 
refusing  to  be  drawn  into  the  deadly  discussion  of 
Henry  VIII.'s  divorce,  Sir  Thomas  More  is  content 
to  live  in  loyal  devotion  to  his  religion  and  to  the 
service  of  the  state,  if  haply  he  may.  And  when  this 
is  denied  him  he  is  content  to  die,  retaining  his 
tolerant  good -humour  and  the  love  of  his  kind  to 
the  end,  and  without  resentment  at  his  fate. 

The  courage  of  the  sage  never  failed  Sir  Thomas 
More  in  his  public  work.  As  "  a  beardless  boy  "  he 
had  resisted  in  parliament  the  king's  extortions,  as 
speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons  he  protected  the 
privileges  of  the  commons.  Wolsey  had  come  down 
to  the  House  with  all  his  train  to  command  a  subsidy, 
but  no  word  was  uttered  in  reply  to  his  address.  In 
vain  Wolsey  appealed  for  an  answer,  Sir  Thomas 
More  could  only  declare  that  the  speaker,  then  the 
mouthpiece  of  the  commons,  had  nothing  to  say  till 


2O2          Leaders  of  the  People          [1529- 

he  had  heard  the  opinion  of  the  House.  "  Where- 
upon, the  cardinal,  displeased  with  Sir  Thomas 
More  that  had  not  in  this  parliament  in  all  things 
satisfied  his  desire,  suddenly  arose  and  departed." 

High  as  More  stood  at  that  time  in  the  affection 
of  Henry,  Sir  Thomas  knew  the  king,  and  the 
nature  of  the  favour  of  princes.  Roper  relates  that 
when  he  offered  his  congratulations,  at  the  time  of 
the  appointment  to  the  chancellorship  of  the  Duchy 
of  Lancaster,  More  answered,  "  I  may  tell  thee  I 
have  no  cause  to  be  proud  thereof,  for  if  my  head 
would  win  him  a  castle  in  France  (for  then  was  there 
war  betwixt  us)  it  should  not  fail  to  go." 

Aware  of  Henry's  character,  More  yet  had  no 
choice  but  to  accept  the  lord  chancellorship  from  the 
king  on  Wolsey's  fall  in  1529.  It  was  no  matter 
for  personal  satisfaction,  and  More's  reply  to  the 
Duke  of  Norfolk  was  substantially  the  same  as  his 
previous  answer  to  Roper:  "Considering  how  wise 
and  honourable  a  prelate  had  lately  before  taken  so 
great  a  fall,  he  had  no  cause  to  rejoice  in  his  new 
dignity."  Erasmus  wrote,  "I  do  not  at  all  con- 
gratulate More,  nor  literature ;  but  I  do  indeed 
congratulate  England,  for  a  better  or  holier  judge 
could  not  have  been  appointed." 

On  November  3rd,  1529,  Sir  Thomas  More,  as 
chancellor,  opened  parliament,  and  in  a  long  speech 
declared  that  "the  cause  of  its  assembly  was  to 
reform  such  things  as  had  been  used  or  permitted  by 
inadvertence,  or  by  changes  of  time  had  become 
inexpedient."  It  was  the  opening  of  the  seven  years' 
parliament,  and  before  six  years  should  run,  this 
same  parliament  would,  at  the  king's  order,  condemn 
Sir  Thomas  More  by  act  of  attainder. 


-1535]  Sir  Thomas  More  203 

The  position  of  the  new  chancellor  was  dangerous 
from  the  first.  Wolsey  had  fallen  because  he  had 
failed  to  help  Henry  to  a  divorce  from  his  queen, 
Catherine  of  Aragon,  and  More  had  been  made  his 
successor  because  the  king  had  counted  on  him  to 
accomplish  the  "  great  matter."  All  that  Sir 
Thomas  could  hope  for  was  that  he  might  be 
allowed  to  do  his  work  as  chancellor  without  being 
mixed  up  with  divorce  proceedings.  As  long  as  he 
was  not  called  upon  to  declare  publicly  that  the 
divorce  was  right,  he  had  no  wish  to  interfere  in  the 
matter.  First  to  last  no  word  of  approval  came 
from  More's  lips  to  encourage  Henry  in  the  divorce, 
but  he  was  not  the  man  to  express  judgment  on  a 
case  that  he  did  not  wish  brought  before  him.1  In 
the  end  the  chancellor's  very  silence  turned  Henry's 
disappointment  to  active  displeasure,  and  More's  life 
was  taken  in  savage  revenge  for  non-compliance 
with  the  royal  will. 

Henry's  divorce  dates  the  beginning  of  the  Pro- 
testant Reformation  in  England — of  that  ecclesi- 
astical revolution  in  which  the  supremacy  of  Rome 
was  rejected,  the  crown  superseded  the  pope  as 
supreme  head  of  the  Church  of  England,  and 
England  was  detached  from  the  rest  of  Roman 
Catholic  Christendom.  In  the  reigns  of  Edward  VI. 
and  Elizabeth  the  revolution  proceeded  still  further, 
and  Catholic  rites  and  doctrines,  service  books  and 
ceremonies  were  rigorously  cast  out  of  the  Church 
of  England,  and  all  who  adhered  to  the  old  order  in 

1  "  He  most  warily  retired  from  every  opposition  but  that  which 
conscience  absolutely  required.  He  displayed  that  very  peculiar 
excellence  of  his  character,  which,  as  it  showed  his  submission  to  be 
the  fruit  of  sense  of  duty,  gave  dignity  to  that  which  in  others  is  apt  to 
seem  to  be  slavish." — Sir  James  Mackintosh,  Life  of  More. 


204          Leaders  of  the  People          [1529- 

religion  were  punished  by  law.  But  those  days  were 
far  off  as  yet. 

More,  at  the  outset  of  this  revolution,  declines  to 
follow  the  king  in  the  rejection  of  the  old  allegiance 
to  Rome.  All  he  asks  for  is  freedom  of  conscience 
to  remain  in  the  faith  of  his  fathers,  to  worship  as 
Christians  in  England  had  worshipped  since  the 
coming  of  Augustine.  To  escape  death  by  giving 
up  this  freedom  is  impossible  for  Sir  Thomas  More. 

The  divorce  from  Queen  Catherine  is  the  turning 
point  in  More's  worldly  fortunes  as  well  as  in  ecclesi- 
astical affairs  in  England. 

Eighteen  years  passed  from  the  day  of  Henry's 
marriage  to  Catherine,  on  his  accession  to  the 
throne,  before  the  divorce  was  mooted.  The 
scruple  was  that  Catherine  had  been  formerly 
betrothed  to  his  dead  brother  Arthur ;  the  moving 
force  of  Henry's  petition  for  divorce  was  the  desire 
to  marry  Anne  Boleyn.  Unable  to  get  the  marriage 
annulled  at  Rome,  or  to  get  a  favourable  opinion 
from  the  universities,  Henry  fell  back  on  Archbishop 
Cranmer  to  decree  the  divorce,  and  finally  this  was 
done  in  1533,  all  appeals  to  Rome  being  henceforth 
forbidden.  Henry  had  already,  in  1531,  called  upon 
the  clergy  to  acknowledge  him  as  the  supreme  head 
of  the  Church  of  England,  and  the  following  year 
they  were  required  to  surrender  the  ancient  right  to 
meet  and  enact  canons.1 

In  these  four  years  the  chancellor  had  kept  out  of 

1  "  Parliament  is  discussing  the  revocation  of  all  synods  and  other 
constitutions  of  the  English  clergy,  and  the  prohibition  of  holding 
synods  without  express  license  of  the  king.  This  is  a  strange  thing. 
Churchmen  will  be  of  less  account  than  shoemakers,  who  have  the 
power  of  assembling  and  making  their  own  statutes." — Chapuys, 
Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VI II.  (Rolls  Series). 


-1535]  Sir  Thomas  More  205 

political  life  as  far  as  he  could,  and  had  given  his 
attention  to  his  judicial  work.  But  in  May,  1532, 
he  resigned  the  great  seal  into  the  king's  hands, 
"seeing  that  affairs  were  going  badly,  and  likely  to 
be  worse,  and  that  if  he  retained  his  office  he  would 
be  obliged  to  act  against  his  conscience,  or  incur  the 
king's  displeasure  as  he  had  already  begun  to  do,  for 
refusing  to  take  his  part  against  the  clergy.  His 
excuse  was  that  his  salary  was  too  small,  and  that  he 
was  not  equal  to  the  work.  Everyone  is  concerned, 
for  there  never  was  a  better  man  in  the  office."1 

Nothing  is  known  of  Sir  Thomas  More's  work  in 
the  chancery  except  his  integrity  and  his  despatch. 
"  When  More  took  the  office  there  were  causes  that 
had  remained  undecided  for  twenty  years.  He  pre- 
sided so  dexterously  and  successfully  that  once  after 
taking  his  seat  and  deciding  a  case,  when  the  next 
case  was  called,  it  was  found  that  there  was  no  second 
case  for  trial.  Such  a  thing  is  said  never  to  have 
happened  before  or  since."  (Stapleton.) 

For  nearly  two  years  More  lived  unmolested  after 
his  resignation  of  the  chancellorship  ;  but  he  had 
incurred  the  enmity  of  the  king  and  the  hatred  of 
Anne  Boleyn,  and  Henry  was  swiftly  driving  at 
certain  changes  in  religion  that  were  to  bring  Sir 
Thomas  More  to  the  Tower  and  the  block,  and 
many  another  honest  Christian  to  the  prison  and  the 
gallows  of  Tyburn. 

In  June,  1533,  after  Cranmer  had  duly  pronounced 
Henry's  marriage  with  Catherine  void,  came  the 
coronation  of  Anne  Boleyn,  and  Sir  Thomas  More 
declined  an  invitation  from  some  of  the  bishops  to 
be  present  at  the  celebration.  He  knew  that  his 

1  Chapuys,  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII.  (Rolls  Series). 


206          Leaders  of  the  People         [1529- 

absence  would  be  marked  unfavourably  by  the  king, 
and  was  ready  to  pay  the  penalty  ;  but  his  care  in 
avoiding  the  expression  of  any  disapproval  of 
Henry's  proceedings  required  an  equal  care  that  no 
approval  should  be  expressed.  To  have  been  pre- 
sent at  the  coronation  of  Anne  would  have  been,  for 
More,  to  condone  the  divorce. 

In  the  autumn  came  an  attempt  to  include  More, 
with  Bishop  Fisher  and  certain  monks  and  friars,  in 
the  treason  of  the  "  Holy  Maid  of  Kent," — 
Elizabeth  Barton,  a  Canterbury  nun.  The 
"treason"  amounted  to  this,  that  the  nun,  who  was 
given  to  prophesying,  declared  that  God  had  re- 
vealed to  her  to  speak  against  Henry's  divorce,  and 
it  was  sufficient  to  bring  her  to  Tyburn.  But  against 
Sir  Thomas  More  no  shred  of  evidence  could  be 
procured,  for  none  existed.  He  had  seen  the  nun, 
and  talked  with  her,  and  "held  her  in  great  estima- 
tion," but  would  neither  commit  himself  to  a  belief 
in  her  visions,  nor  permit  any  discussion  on  the 
king's  doings ;  but  wrote  to  the  nun  a  letter  which 
could  not  have  been  more  prudent,  as  he  exhorted 
her  "  to  attend  to  devotion,  and  not  meddle  in  the 
affairs  of  princes." 

The  name  of  Sir  Thomas  More  was  struck  out  of 
the  bill  of  attainder,  but  the  days  of  his  liberty  were 
already  numbered. 

The  Act  of  Succession,  passed  in  March,  1534, 
made  Mary,  the  daughter  of  Henry  and  Catherine, 
illegitimate,  and  Elizabeth,  Anne's  child,  the  heir  to 
the  throne.  The  act  also  declared  that  "  all  the 
nobles  of  the  realm,  spiritual  and  temporal,  and  all 
other  subjects  arrived  at  full  age,  should  be  obliged 
to  take  corporal  oath,  in  the  presence  of  the  king  or 


-1535]  Sir  Thomas  More  207 

his  commissioners,  to  observe  and  maintain  the  whole 
effect  and  contents  of  the  act,"  under  the  penalties 
for  treason  for  refusal.  The  words  of  the  oath  were 
not  inserted  in  the  act,  and  the  commissioners  drew 
up  a  formula,  requiring  all  persons  to  affirm  in 
addition  that  the  marriage  with  Catherine  was  in- 
valid, and  the  marriage  with  Anne  valid,  and  further 
to  recall  and  repudiate  allegiance  to  any  foreign 
authority,  prince,  or  potentate.  This  was  a  much 
larger  demand  than  parliament  had  authorised,  for  it 
contained  a  denial  of  the  papal  supremacy,  while  all 
that  the  act  had  required  was  an  acknowledgment  of 
the  succesion  to  the  crown.  The  pope  had  only  just 
given  his  final  decision  on  Henry's  appeal  for  divorce 
(March,  1534),  and  the  decision  had  been  against  the 
king  and  in  favour  of  the  marriage.  The  oath 
now  administered  was  in  direct  opposition  to  the 
supremacy  of  Rome,  and  as  such  was  impossible  to 
the  consciences  of  men  like  Sir  Thomas  More  and 
Bishop  Fisher,  though  the  great  bulk  of  the  clergy 
took  it  without  giving  any  trouble. 

More  was  quite  prepared  to  swear  to  the  succes- 
sion of  Elizabeth.  Parliament  had,  in  his  eyes,  a 
plain  right  to  decide  who  should  wear  the  crown, 
and  the  doctrine  of  divine  hereditary  kingship  does 
not  come  in  till  the  Stuarts.  But  this  mere  willing- 
ness to  comply  with  the  letter  of  the  law  was  not 
sufficient.  More's  silent  want  of  sympathy  with  the 
divorce,  and  with  the  breach  it  involved  with  Rome, 
was  intolerable  to  Henry,  who  had  counted  More 
amongst  his  dearest  friends ;  for  friend  or  foe,  in 
Henry's  power,  could  only  live  by  abject  agreement 
with  the  royal  pleasure.  No  king  had  three  more 
faithful  servants  than  Henry  VIII.  had  in  Thomas 


20  8          Leaders  of  the  People         [1529- 

Wolsey,  Thomas  More,  and  Thomas  Cromwell,  and 
no  king  destroyed  his  ministers  with  such  fierce 
caprice. 

Sir  Thomas  More,  unable  to  take  the  oath,  was 
sent  to  the  Tower  in  April,  1534,  Bishop  Fisher 
having  already  been  lodged  there.  In  November 
parliament  met  again,  and  passed  the  Act  of 
Supremacy,  making  Henry  VIII.  "the  supreme  head 
of  the  Church  of  England,"  and  declaring  that  on 
and  after  the  first  of  February,  1535,  it  was  high 
treason  "  to  deprive  the  king's  most  royal  person,  the 
queen's,  or  their  heirs  apparent  of  their  dignity,  title 
or  name  of  their  royal  estates,  or  slanderously  and 
maliciously  publish  or  pronounce,  by  express  writing 
or  words,  that  the  king,  our  sovereign  lord,  should  be 
heretic,  schismatic,  tyrant,  infidel,  etc."  Under  this 
act  Sir  Thomas  More  was  to  be  assailed  and  to  die. 
That  the  martyrdom  was  a  "judicial  murder"  is 
plain — to  Lord  Campbell  it  was  "  the  blackest  crime 
that  ever  has  been  perpetrated  in  England  under  the 
form  of  law."1 

The  indictment  was  for  treason,  and  on  July  ist,  a 
week  after  Bishop  Fisher's  execution,  Sir  Thomas 
More  was  brought  before  the  judges.  To  the  charge 
of  having  refused  the  king,  "  maliciously,  falsely,  and 
traitorously,  his  title  of  supreme  head  of  the  Church 
of  England,"  More  answered  that  the  statute  had 
been  passed  while  he  was  in  prison,  and  that  he  was 
dead  to  the  world,  and  had  not  cared  about  such 
things — "your  statute  cannot  condemn  me  to  death 
for  such  silence,  for  neither  your  statute  nor  any  laws 
in  the  world  punish  people  except  for  words  and 
deeds — surely  not  for  keeping  silence." 

1  Lives  of  the  Chancellors. 


-1535]  Sir  Thomas  More  209 

"  To  this  the  king's  proctor  replied  that  such 
silence  was  a  certain  proof  of  malice  intended 
against  the  statute,  especially  as  every  faithful 
subject,  on  being  questioned  about  the  statute,  was 
obliged  to  answer  categorically  that  the  statute  was 
good  and  wholesome."  "Surely,"  replied  More,  "if 
common  law  is  true,  and  he  who  is  silent  seems  to 
consent,  my  silence  should  rather  be  taken  as 
approval  than  contempt  of  your  statute." 

To  the  first  article  charging  him  with  having 
always  maliciously  opposed  the  king's  second 
marriage,  More  had  answered  that  anything  he  had 
said  had  been  according  to  his  conscience,  and  that 
for  "this  error,"  he  had  already  suffered  fifteen 
months'  imprisonment,  and  the  confiscation  of  his 
property. 

The  trial  was  soon  over,  for  the  king  had  decided 
on  More's  death  when  Fisher  was  executed,  order- 
ing the  preachers  to  set  forth  to  the  people  the 
treasons  of  the  late  Bishop  of  Rochester  and  of  Sir 
Thomas  More ;  "joining  them  together  though  the 
later  was  still  untried."1  The  jury,  after  a  quarter  of 
an  hour's  absence,  declared  him  guilty  of  death  for 
maliciously  contravening  the  statute,  and  sentence 
was  pronounced  by  the  chancellor  "according  to  the 
tenour  of  the  new  law." 

Death  being  now  in  sight,  and  faith  having  been 
kept  with  his  conscience,  More  has  no  longer  any 
reason  to  observe  silence.  To  the  usual  question 
whether  he  has  anything  to  say  against  the 
sentence,  he  replied,  that  for  the  seven  years  he  had 
studied  the  matter  he  could  not  find  that  supremacy 
in  a  church  belonged  to  a  layman,  or  to  any  but  the 

1  Letters  and  Papers  of  Henry  VIII.  (Rolls  Series). 

15 


2io          Leaders  of  the  People         [1529- 

see  of  Rome,  as  granted  personally  by  our  Lord 
when  on  earth  to  St.  Peter  and  his  successors  ;  and 
that,  as  the  city  of  London  could  not  make  a  law 
against  the  laws  of  the  realm  of  England,  so 
England  could  not  make  a  law  contrary  to  the 
general  law  of  Christ's  Catholic  Church ;  and  that 
the  Magna  Charta  of  England  said  that  "the 
English  Church  should  be  free  to  enjoy  all  its  rights," 
as  the  king  had  sworn  at  his  consecration.  Inter- 
rupted by  the  chancellor  with  the  inquiry  whether 
he  wished  to  be  considered  wiser  and  better  than  all 
the  bishops  and  nobles  of  the  realm  who  had  sworn 
to  the  king's  supremacy,  More  retorted,  "  For  one 
bishop  of  your  opinion,  my  lord,  I  have  a  hundred 
saints  of  mine  ;  and  for  one  parliament  of  yours,  and 
God  knows  of  what  kind,  I  have  all  the  general 
councils  for  a  thousand  years."  The  Duke  of  Norfolk 
said  that  now  his  malice  was  clear. 

On  the  sixth  of  July,  1535,  Sir  Thomas  More 
was  beheaded  on  Tower  Hill,  for  the  king  remitted 
the  ferocious  mutilations  that  accompanied  the  ex- 
ecutions for  treason  at  Tyburn.  "  The  scaffold  was 
very  unsteady,  and  putting  his  feet  on  the  ladder,  he 
said,  merrily,  to  the  lieutenant  of  the  Tower  :  "I 
pray  thee  see  me  safe  up,  and  for  my  coming  down 
let  me  shift  for  myself."1 

Then,  with  a  simple  request  to  the  people  standing 
round  to  pray  for  him,  and  to  bear  witness  that  he 
died  a  Catholic  for  the  faith  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
a  friendly  word  to  the  executioner,  and  a  last  prayer 
— the  5ist  Psalm — the  axe  fell,  and  More  was  dead. 

Beyond  More's  scholarship  and  wit,  and  his  affec- 
tion for  his  family  and  friends,  stands  out  his  great, 

1  Roper. 


-1535]  Sir  Thomas  More  211 

unflinching  quality  of  loyalty  to  conscience.  When  the 
power  was  in  his  hands  as  lord  chancellor,  no  one 
was  put  to  death  by  Sir  Thomas  More  for  heresy  in 
England,  though  he  did  what  he  could  by  his  pen  to 
check  the  innovations  of  Luther,  which  he  hated, — 
not  only  because  they  broke  up  the  unity  of  Christen- 
dom, but  because,  it  seemed  to  him,  they  struck  at 
all  social  morality  and  decency.1  The  violence 
of  Luther's  outbreak,  the  determination  of  the 
Lutherans — sure  of  their  own  possession  of  the 
truth — to  allow  no  liberty  to  Catholics,  and  the  anti- 
nomian  communism  of  the  anabaptists  —  all  these 
things  made  Protestantism  detestable  to  men  like  Sir 
Thomas  More  and  Erasmus,  and  made  More  declare 
that  dogmatising  heretics  ought  to  be  repressed  by 
the  state  as  breeders  of  strife  and  contention.  But 
his  own  record  is  clear  :  "And  of  all  that  ever  came 
in  my  hand  for  heresy,  as  help  me  God,  saving  (as  I 
said)  the  sure  keeping  of  them,  had  never  any  of 
them  any  stripe  or  stroke  given  them,  so  much  as  a 
fillip  on  the  forehead."2 

"What  other  controversialist  can  be  named,  who, 
having  the  power  to  crush  antagonists  whom  he 
viewed  as  the  disturbers  of  the  quiet  of  his  own 
declining  years,  the  destroyers  of  all  the  hopes  which 
he  had  cherished  for  mankind,  contented  himself 
with  severity  of  language  ?  "3 

1  "  To  More  a  heretic  was  neither  a  simple  man  erring  by  ignorance, 
nor  a  learned  man  using  his  freedom  in  doubtful  points :  he  was  a  man 
whose  heart  was  '  proud,  poisoned,  and  obstinate,'  because  he  denied 
the  Divine  guidance  of  the  Church  while  he  claimed  special  Divine  in- 
spiration for  himself." — Rev.  T.  E.  Bridgett. 

2  More's  English    Works — Apology.     It  is  only  thirty   years  after   his 
death  that  Foxe  suggests  More  as  a  persecutor.     All  the  evidence  is  in 
the  opposite  direction. 

3  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  Life  of  More. 


212  Leaders  of  the  People          [1529- 

The  author  of  the  Utopia  was  a  critic,  as 
Colet  and  Erasmus  were,  of  abuses  in  the  Church  ; 
but  like  his  friends  he  lived  and  died  a  Catholic. 
He  saw  Lutheranism  as  the  source  of  a  thousand 
ills,  and  with  Erasmus  opposed  it ;  but  though 
heretics  were  anti-social  and  factious,  he  would 
not  put  one  to  death  for  error. 

It  is  all  through  Sir  Thomas  More's  character — 
this  respect  for  conscience.  There  is  no  going  back 
on  the  wide  toleration  of  his  early  manhood,  and 
high  office  and  responsibilities  of  state  no  more 
cramp  or  belittle  his  faith  than  they  destroy  his  play- 
fulness or  the  warmth  of  his  affections. 

He  died  a  martyr  for  the  religion  of  his  life, 
for  the  simple  right  to  abide  in  the  old  Catholic 
paths  of  his  fellow-countrymen. 

As  Sir  Thomas  More  was  not  the  first  of  the 
Catholic  martyrs  at  the  Reformation,  for  he  had 
seen  his  old  friends,  the  Carthusian  monks,  carried  to 
Tyburn,  so  he  was  not  the  last.  For  the  next  fifty 
years  of  Henry  and  Elizabeth,  English  men  and 
women  were  to  suffer  for  the  old  faith  of  England, 
and  in  Mary's  reign  to  die  as  bravely  for  Pro- 
testantism. 

In  spite  of  monasteries  and  priories  destroyed,  and 
parish  churches  stripped  and  plundered,  in  spite  of 
penal  laws  which  banned  its  priesthood  and  pro- 
scribed its  worship,  the  Catholicism  More  died  for 
has  endured  in  England.  All  that  parliament  could 
do  to  exterminate  the  belief  in  papal  supremacy  has 
been  done ;  all  that  panic  and  prejudice  could 
accomplish  by  "  popish  plots  "  to  the  same  end  has 
been  accomplished.  These  things  have  been  no 
more  successful  than  the  mad  "  no  popery  "  riots  of 


-1535]  Sir  Thomas  More  213 

Lord  George  Gordon  in  crushing  the  faith  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  minority.  The  penal  laws  have 
gone,  Catholic  emancipation  has  been  obtained,  a 
Catholic  heirarchy  has  been  set  up,  and  to-day  in 
England  the  freedom  of  conscience  that  was  refused 
to  Sir  Thomas  More  is  the  accepted  liberty  of  all. 

In  1887  Sir  Thomas  More,  with  Bishop  Fisher 
and  the  Carthusian  martyrs,  were  beatified  by  Pope 
Leo  XIII.  Serving  their  religion  in  life  and  death, 
they  served  the  cause  of  human  liberty,  v/ithstanding 
Henry  as  Anselm  withstood  the  Red  King,  and 
as  Langton  withstood  John. 


Robert  Ket  and  The  Norfolk 
Rising 


AUTHORITIES  :  The  Commotion  in  Norfolk,  by 
Nicholas  Sotherton,  1576  (Harleian  MS.)  ;  De 
Furoribus  Norfolciensum,  by  Nevylle,  1575  (Translated 
into  English  by  Wood,  1615);  Holinshed — Chronicle; 
Sir  John  Hayward — Life  of  Edward  VI.  ;  Strype — 
Memorials  ;  Blomefield — History  of  Norfolk  ;  F.  W. 
Russell — Ketfs  Rebellion  ;  W.  Rye  ;  Victoria  County 
History — Norfolk. 


ROBERT  KET  AND  THE 
NORFOLK  RISING.      1549. 


I 


Norfolk  Rising  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tuary  was  a  land  war,  caused  directly  by 
the  enclosing  of  the  common  fields  of  the 
peasants,    and    the    break    up     of    the 
accustomed  rural  life. 

The  landowners  finding  greater  profit  in  breeding 
sheep  and  cattle  than  in  the  small  holdings  of 
peasants,  began,  about  1470,  to  seize  the  fields  which 
from  time  immemorial  had  been  cultivated  by  the 
country  people  in  common,  and  to  evict  whole 
parishes  by  pulling  down  all  the  dwelling  places. 
For  eighty  years  these  clearances  were  going  on. 
Acts  of  Parliament  were  passed  in  1489  and  1515 
to  prohibit  the  "pulling  down  of  towns"  and  to 
order  the  rebuilding  of  such  towns,  and  the  restoration 
of  pasture  lands  to  tillage,  but  both  acts  were  quite 
inoperative.  In  1517,  Cardinal  Wolsey's  Royal 
Commission  on  Enclosures  reported  on  the  defiance 
of  the  law  in  seven  Midland  counties,  where  more 
than  36,000  acres  had  been  enclosed ;  but  legal 
proceedings  against  the  landowners  were  stayed  on 
the  latter  promising  to  make  restitution. 

Thomas  More,  in  the  first  part  of  his  Utopia, 
in  1516,  described  for  all  time  what  the  enclosures 
he  witnessed  meant  for  England. 

"  For  look  in  what  parts  of  the  realm  doth  grow 
the  finest  and  therefore  dearest  wool,  there  noblemen 

217 


2i8          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

and  gentlemen,  yea,  and  certain  abbots,  holy  men 
no  doubt,  not  contenting  themselves  with  the  yearly 
revenues  and  profits  that  were  wont  to  grow  to  their 
forefathers  and  predecessors  of  their  lands,  nor  being 
content  that  they  live  in  rest  and  pleasure — nothing 
profiting,  yea,  much  annoying  the  public  weal- 
leave  no  ground  for  tillage,  they  inclose  all  into 
pastures ;  they  throw  down  houses  ;  they  pluck  down 
towns  and  leave  nothing  standing  but  only  the 
church  to  be  made  a  sheep  fold.  .  .  .  They  turn 
all  dwelling-places  and  all  glebe  land  into  desolation 
and  wilderness.  Therefore,  that  one  covetous  and 
insatiable  comorant  may  compass  about  and  inclose 
many  thousand  acres  of  ground  together  within  one 
pale  or  hedge,  the  husbandmen  be  thrust  out  of  their 
own,  or  else  either  by  cunning  and  fraud,  or  by 
violent  oppression,  or  by  wrongs  and  injuries  they 
be  so  wearied,  that  they  be  compelled  to  sell  all.  By 
one  means  therefore  or  another,  either  by  hook  or 
by  crook  they  must  needs  depart  away,  men,  women, 
husbands,  wives,  fatherless  children,  widows,  mothers 
with  their  young  babies,  and  their  whole  household 
small  in  substance  and  large  in  number,  as  husbandry 
requireth  many  hands.  Away  they  trudge,  I  say, 
out  of  their  known  and  accustomed  houses,  finding 
no  place  to  rest  in.  ...  And  when  they  have 
wandered  abroad  till  the  little  they  have  be  spent, 
what  can  they  then  else  do  but  steal,  and  then  justly 
be  hanged,  or  else  go  about  a  begging.  And  yet 
then  also  they  be  cast  in  prison  as  vagabonds, 
because  they  go  about  and  work  not:  whom  no  man 
will  set  a  work,  though  they  never  so  willingly  proffer 
themselves  thereto.  For  one  shepherd  or  herdsman 
is  enough  to  eat  up  that  ground  with  cattle,  to  the 


Robert  Ket  219 

occupying  whereof  about  husbandry  many  hands 
were  requisite." 

This  was  social  England  in  the  early  years  of 
Henry  VIII.,  and  every  year  saw  things  grow  worse 
for  the  rural  folk,  in  spite  of  further  royal  pro- 
clamations against  enclosures  in  1526.  A  series  of 
bad  harvests  drove  a  starving  population  to  riot  in 
Norfolk  in  1527  and  1529.  In  1536  came  the 
suppression  of  376  lesser  monasteries,  followed  two 
years  later  by  the  dissolution  of  all  remaining 
monasteries  and  priories,  and  in  1547  by  the  royal 
confiscation  of  the  property  of  the  religious  guilds  and 
brotherhoods. 

The  landowners  having  established  a  starving 
unemployed  class  by  the  simple  process  of  depriving 
people  of  access  to  the  land,  and  the  crown  having 
removed  the  only  source  of  relief  to  the  unemployed 
by  destroying  the  monasteries,  it  remained  for 
parliament  to  deal  with  the  "  social  problem  "  thus 
created  by  declaring  poverty  a  crime,  and  the 
unemployed  person  a  felon.  The  lash  and  the 
gallows  were  to  solve  the  problem. 

In  1531,  an  act  of  parliament  granted  licences  to 
the  impotent  beggar,  and  ordered  a  whipping  for  all 
other  mendicants.  Five  years  later  stronger 
measures  were  adopted,  and  whipping  was  only 
permitted  to  first  offenders :  mutilation  and  hanging 
were  the  subsequent  penalties  on  conviction,  and 
thousands  of  unemployed  men  and  women  suffered 
under  this  act.  But  still  the  unemployed  existed, 
for  the  enclosures  had  not  been  stopped  ;  and  so  the 
first  year  of  Edward  VI.  saw  an  act  passed  declaring 
the  convicted  unemployed  "a  slave."  (As  it  seemed 
to  many  that  parliament  had  got  rid  of  papal 


22O          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

authority  only  to  bring  back  slavery  in  England,  this 
act  was  repealed  in  two  years,  and  the  act  of  1531 
revived.) 

The  bitterness  of  the  agrarian  misery,  the  violent 
destruction  of  all  the  old  religious  customs  and 
habits  of  the  people,  the  confiscation  of  the  funds 
of  the  guilds,  the  open  despoiling  of  the  parish 
churches  of  the  people1 — all  these  things  plunged 
the  country  into  confusion  and  despair.  The 
general  rising  in  Lincolnshire  and  the  north  in  1536 
(known  as  the  "  Pilgrimage  of  Grace  ")  against  the 
suppressions  of  the  monasteries,  and  the  rising  in 
Cornwall  and  Devon  in  1549  against  Edward's  VI. 's 
new  Book  of  Common  Prayer  were  strong  mani- 
festations of  the  popular  dislike  of  the  changes 
made  in  religion  by  Henry  VIII.  and  the  ministers 
of  Edward  VI. 

In  Norfolk,  in  1537,  the  people  made  an  insurrec- 
tion against  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries  ;  but 
the  later  risings  of  1540  (at  Griston,  when  one  John 
Walker  "  exhorted  the  people  to  destroy  the  gentry  "), 
and  in  1549,  under  Ket,  were  not  concerned  with 
the  religious  troubles  of  the  times,  but  were  frankly 
agrarian.  The  Norfolk  rising,  which  Ket  led,  was 
no  more  connected  with  Protestantism  than  the 
Peasant  Revolt  of  1381  was  with  Lollardy.  Agrarian 
disturbances  took  place  in  a  number  of  counties  in 
1549.  In  May  the  peasants  of  Somerset  and 
Lincoln  were  in  revolt,  and  in  July  there  were 
tumults  in  Essex,  Kent,  Wiltshire,  Buckinghamshire, 
and  Oxfordshire.  A  rude  Cambridge  ballad  of  the 
time  extols  the  pulling  down  of  enclosures  : 

1  See  Dr.  Jessop,  The  Great  Pillage, 


1549]  Robert  Ket  221 

Cast  hedge  and  ditch  in  the  lake, 
Fixed  with  many  a  stake  ; 
Though  they  be  never  so  fast, 
Yet  asunder  they  are  wrest. 
Sir,   I  think  that  this  work 
Is  as  good  as  to  build  a  kirk. 

In  1548  Protector  Somerset  had  followed  Wolsey's 
footsteps  in  issuing  a  proclamation  for  a  royal  com- 
mission to  inquire  and  report  concerning  enclosures, 
and  to  give  the  names  of  all  who  kept  more  than 
two  thousand  sheep  or  who  had  "  taken  from 
any  other  their  commons."1  The  commissioners 
were  also  "  to  reform  "  any  cases  of  the  enclosing  of 
commons  and  highways,  "  without  due  recompense," 
which  they  might  find  ;  "  and  to  the  intent  your 
doings  may  proceed  without  all  suspicion,  and  the 
people  conceive  some  good  hope  of  reformation  at 
your  hands,  we  would  that  as  many  of  you  as  be 
in  any  of  the  cases  to  be  reformed,  do  first,  for 
example's  sake,  begin  to  the  reformation  of  your- 
selves." 

Somerset's  ingenuous  suggestion  was  naturally 
disregarded  by  the  commissioners,  and  beyond 
making  inquiries  and  publishing  a  report — to  the 
effect  that  in  the  counties  of  Suffolk,  Essex,  Hert- 
ford, Kent,  and  Worcester  nearly  all  the  common 
lands2  had  been  enclosed,  while  in  Norfolk  and 
Northampton  large  enclosures  had  been  made — the 
commission  of  1548  was  as  fruitless  as  its  pre- 
decessors. Somerset,  however,  got  some  reputation 

1  See  State  Papers,  Domestic,  Edward  VI. 

2  The  common  lands  engrossed  in  the  I5th  and  i6th  centuries  were 
the  farm  lands  cultivated  in  common  by  the  peasants.     The  enclosure  of 
the  commons  was  left  to  a  later  date,  and  took  place  between  1760  and 
1830. 


222          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

by  it  as  an  enemy  to  the  enclosures,  and  certainly 
incurred  the  dislike  of  the  landowners.  But  where 
Wolsey,  in  the  hey-day  of  power,  had  failed,  there 
was  small  chance  of  success  for  Somerset,  with  the 
country  in  a  state  of  anarchy,  and  the  nation  rent 
and  distracted  by  a  violent  revolution  in  the  Church. 

The  only  strong  movement  to  prevent  the  utter 
downfall  of  the  country-people  was  the  Norfolk 
Rising,  which  Robert  Ket  directed  in  the  summer  of 
1549.  It  failed  in  the  end,  but  for  more  than  six 
weeks  the  power  of  the  landlords  was  broken  round 
Norwich,  their  enclosures  were  stopped,  and  the 
hope  of  better  things  filled  the  hearts  of  the  peasants. 

The  rising  began  at  Attleborough  on  2oth  June 
when  Squire  Green,  of  Wylby,  set  up  fences  and 
hedges  round  the  common  lands  at  Harpham  and 
Attleborough,  and  the  people,  excited  by  news  that 
in  Kent  similar  fences  had  been  destroyed,  pro- 
ceeded to  pull  them  down.  For  the  next  fortnight 
the  revolt  had  neither  leaders  nor  organization. 
"  There  were  secret  meetings  of  men  running  hither 
and  thither,  and  then  withdrawing  themselves  for 
secret  conferences,  but  at  length  they  all  began  to 
deal  tumultuously  and  to  rage  openly."  On  July  7th 
the  annual  feast  at  Wymondham,  in  honour  of  the 
translation  of  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury,  brought 
the  country  folk  together  from  miles  round  ;  and  at 
the  close  of  the  fair  they  all  set  off  to  break  down 
the  fences  set  up  round  the  common  lands  at  H ether- 
set  by  one  Sergeant  Flowerdew.1 

1  This  Flowerdew  had  distinguished  himself  at  the  destruction  of  the 
abbey  at  Wymondham  by  Henry  VIII.,  by  tearing  off  the  lead  from  the 
roof  of  the  church  and  pulling  down  the  choir,  for  the  sake  of  the  stones, 
after  the  people  had  raised  a  large  sum  of  money  for  the  king  in  order  to 
save  the  church. 


1549]  Robert  Ket  223 

Flowerdew,  unable  to  save  his  fences,  proposed  a 
diversion.  The  Kets  at  Wymondham  had  made 
enclosures,  why  shouldn't  the  rioters  deal  with  them 
in  similar  fashion  ?  Flowerdew  actually  paid  over 
4od.  to  encourage  an  attack  on  the  Kets. 

Robert  Ket  and  his  brother  were  well-known  men. 
Both  were  craftsmen,  Robert,  a  tanner,  and  William, 
a  butcher.  They  were  landowners  besides,  and  men 
of  substance  and  of  old  family,  for  it  was  said  the 
Kets  had  been  in  the  land  since  the  Norman  Con- 
quest. Robert  Ket  held  three  manors  from  the 
Earl  of  Warwick ;  his  yearly  income  was  put  down 
at  £s°>  and  his  property  valued  at  1,000  marks. 
Like  other  landowners,  the  Kets  had  made  enclo- 
sures, but  on  the  arrival  of  the  people  from  H  ether- 
set  they  at  once  declared  themselves  willing  to 
stand  by  the  movement  for  freeing  the  land.  Robert 
Ket  felt  the  misery  of  his  neighbours.  He  saw  that  if 
the  revolt  was  to  be  anything  more  than  a  local  riot 
it  must  have  necessary  guidance,  and  his  sympathies 
were  entirely  on  the  democratic  side.  And  so  from 
that  time  forward  he  gave  up  the  quiet  of  a  country 
gentleman's  life  at  Wymondham  for  the  strenuous 
movement  of  an  insurgent  camp. 

To  the  appeal  of  the  people  for  help,  Ket 
answered  passionately,  "  I  am  ready,  and  will  be 
ready  at  all  times,  to  do  whatever,  not  only  to 
repress,  but  to  subdue  the  power  of  great  men. 
Whatsoever  lands  I  have  enclosed  shall  again  be 
made  common  unto  ye  and  all  men,  and  my  own 
hands  shall  first  perform  it." 

Then  Robert  Ket  went  on  to  commit  himself 
body  and  soul  to  the  movement,  resolved  that  the 
peasants  should  not  be  left  unaided  in  the  struggle 


224          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

they  had  begun,  and  willing  to  take  upon  himself  the 
burden  and  responsibility  of  leadership. 

"  You  shall  have  me,  if  you  will,  not  only  as  a 
companion,  but  as  a  captain  ;  and  in  the  doing  of 
the  so  great  a  work  before  us,  not  only  as  a  fellow, 
but  for  a  leader,  author  and  principal." 

If  the  ambition  which  clutches  at  sovereignty  and 
rule  is  despicable,  even  more  despicable  is  the  weak- 
ness which  refuses  to  take  command  at  times  of 
peril. 

To  Robert  Ket  and  his  brother  there  was  no 
promise  of  the  wrorld's  honour  and  glory  should  the 
rising  be  successful.  At  the  best  would  be  the 
satisfaction  of  a  battle  fought  and  won  for  the 
deliverance  of  long-suffering  peasants.  At  the  worst 
the  laying  down  of  life  in  a  good  cause,  as  Geoffrey 
Litster  and  many  a  Norfolk  man  had  done  in  by- 
gone days. 

Robert  Ket's  leadership  was  acclaimed  with  en- 
thusiasm, nor  was  it  ever  disputed  throughout  the 
rising.  In  this,  the  last  of  the  great  popular  risings 
in  England,  the  Norfolk  men  were  as  loyal  to  their 
leader  as  the  men  of  Kent  were  to  Wat  Tyler  and 
Jack  Cade.  And  in  each  case  that  loyalty  had  ample 
justification. 

There  were  but  a  thousand  men  involved  when 
the  rising  began,  but  under  Ket's  command  the 
movement  passed  rapidly  from  the  fluid  "running 
hither  and  thither  "  condition  of  the  first  fortnight, 
and  became  the  march  of  an  organized  army. 

On  July  loth,  two  days  after  Ket  took  command, 
this  army  was  on  the  road  to  Norwich,  and  after 
crossing  the  river  at  Cringleford,  lay  encamped  at 
Eaton  Wood. 


1549]  Robert  Ket  225 

It  is  plain  from  Ket's  speeches  to  his  men,  and 
from  "The  Rebels'  Complaint,"  which  he  published  at 
this  time,  that  to  Robert  Ket  the  rising  was  not  only 
to  put  down  enclosures,  its  aim  was  rather  to  strike  at 
the  root  of  the  evil  and  to  put  an  end  to  the  ascend- 
ancy of  the  landlord  class,  and  make  England  a  free 
commonwealth.  Either  the  people  must  put  down 
landlords,  or  very  soon  the  landlords  would  have  the 
whole  land  in  their  possession,  and  the  people  would 
be  in  hopeless  and  helpless  subjection.  Had  not 
an  act  of  parliament  been  actually  passed  making 
"  slaves "  of  the  landless  men,  dispossessed  by 
enclosures?  When  parliament  was  establishing 
slavery  it  was  time  for  honest  men  to  be  up  and 
doing,  rousing  the  people  to  action. 

Ket's  speech  at  Eaton  Wood  is  a  fierce  attack  on 
the  landlords,  and  a  reminder  that  having  ventured 
so  far,  the  peasants  must  advance  yet  further  : 

Now  are  ye  overtopped  and  trodden  down  by  gentlemen, 
and  put  out  of  possibility  ever  to  recover  foot.  Rivers  of 
riches  ran  into  the  coffers  of  your  landlords,  while  you  are 
pair'd  to  the  quick,  and  fed  upon  pease  and  oats  like  beasts. 
You  are  fleeced  by  these  landlords  for  their  private  benefit, 
and  as  well  kept  under  by  the  public  burdens  of  State  wherein 
while  the  richer  sort  favour  themselves,  ye  are  gnawn  to  the 
very  bones.  Your  tyrannous  masters  often  implead,  arrest, 
and  cast  you  into  prison,  so  that  they  may  the  more  terrify  and 
torture  you  in  your  minds,  and  wind  your  necks  more  surely 
under  their  arms.  And  then  they  palliate  these  pilleries  with 
the  fair  pretence  of  law  and  authority  !  Fine  workmen,  I 
warrant  you,  are  this  law  and  authority,  who  can  do  their 
dealings  so  closely  that  men  can  only  discover  them  for  your 
undoing.  Harmless  counsels  are  fit  for  tame  fools  ;  for  you 
who  have  already  stirred  there  is  no  hope  but  in  adventuring 
boldly. 

In  "  The  Rebels'    Complaint,"  the  same  note  is 

16 


226          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

struck.  Only  by  taking  up  arms,  and  mixing 
Heaven  and  earth  together,  can  the  intolerable 
oppression  of  the  landlords  be  ended. 

The  pride  of  great  men  is  now  intolerable,  but  our  condition 
miserable. 

These  abound  in  delights  ;  and  compassed  with  the  fullness 
of  all  things,  and  consumed  with  vain  pleasures,  thirst  only 
after  gain,  inflamed  with  the  burning  delights  of  their  desires. 

But  ourselves,  almost  killed  with  labour  and  watching,  do 
nothing  all  our  life  long  but  sweat,  mourn,  hunger,  and  thirst. 
Which  things,  though  they  seem  miserable  and  base  (as  they 
are  indeed  most  miserable),  yet  might  be  borne  howsoever, 
if  they  which  are  drowned  in  the  boiling  seas  of  evil  delights 
did  not  pursue  the  calamities  and  miseries  of  other  men  with 
too  much  insolent  hatred.  But  now  both  we  and  our  miser- 
able condition  is  a  laughing  stock  to  these  most  proud  and 
insolent  men — who  are  consumed  with  ease  and  idleness. 
Which  thing  (as  it  may)  grieveth  us  so  sore  and  inflicteth  such 
a  stain  of  evil  report,  so  that  nothing  is  more  grievous  for  us 
to  remember,  nor  more  unjust  to  suffer. 

The  present  condition  of  possessing  land  seemeth  miserable 
and  slavish — holding  it  all  at  the  pleasure  of  great  men  ;  not 
freely,  but  by  prescription,  and,  as  it  were,  at  the  will  and 
pleasure  of  the  lord.  For  as  soon  as  any  man  offend  any  of 
these  gorgeous  gentlemen,  he  is  put  out,  deprived,  and  thrust 
from  all  his  goods. 

How  long  shall  we  suffer  so  great  oppression  to  go  un- 
revenged  ? 

For  so  far  as  they,  the  gentlemen,  now  gone  in  cruelty  and 
covetousness,  that  they  are  not  content  only  to  take  all  by 
violence  away  from  us,  and  to  consume  in  riot  and  effeminate 
delights  what  they  get  by  force  and  villainy,  but  they  must 
also  suck  in  a  manner  our  blood  and  marrow  out  of  our  veins 
and  bones. 

The  common  pastures  left  by  our  predecessors  for  our  relief 
and  our  children  are  taken  away. 

The  lands  which  in  the  memory  of  our  fathers  were 
common,  those  are  ditched  and  hedged  in  and  made  several  ; 
the  pastures  are  enclosed,  and  we  shut  out.  Whatsoever 
fowls  of  the  air  or  fishes  of  the  water,  and  increase  of  the 
earth — all  these  do  they  devour,  consume,  and  swallow  up  ; 


1549]  Robert  Ket  227 

yea,  nature  doth  not  suffice  to  satisfy  their  lusts,  but  they 
seek  out  new  devices,  and,  as  it  were,  forms  of  pleasures  to 
embalm  and  perfume  themselves,  to  abound  in  pleasant 
smells,  to  pour  in  sweet  things  to  sweet  things.  Finally, 
they  seek  from  all  places  all  things  for  their  desire  and  the 
provocation  of  lust.  While  we  in  the  meantime  eat  herbs 
and  roots,  and  languish  with  continual  labour,  and  yet  are 
envied  that  we  live,  breathe,  and  enjoy  common  air ! 

Shall  they,  as  they  have  brought  hedges  about  common 
pastures,  enclose  with  their  intolerable  lusts  also  all  the  com- 
modities and  pleasures  of  this  life,  which  Nature,  the  parent 
of  us  all,  would  have  common,  and  bringeth  forth  every  day, 
for  us,  as  well  as  for  them  ? 

We  can  no  longer  bear  so  much,  so  great,  and  so  cruel 
injury  ;  neither  can  we  with  quiet  minds  behold  so  great 
covetousness,  excess,  and  pride  of  the  nobility.  We  will 
rather  take  arms,  and  mix  Heaven  and  earth  together,  than 
endure  so  great  cruelty. 

Nature  hath  provided  for  us,  as  well  as  for  them  ;  hath 
given  us  a  body  and  a  soul,  and  hath  not  envied  us  other 
things.  While  we  have  the  same  form,  and  the  same  con- 
dition of  birth  together  with  them,  why  should  they  have  a 
life  so  unlike  unto  ours,  and  differ  so  far  from  us  in  calling  ? 

We  see  that  things  have  now  come  to  extremities,  and  we 
will  prove  the  extremity.  We  will  rend  down  hedges,  fill  up 
ditches,  and  make  a  way  for  every  man  into  the  common 
pasture.  Finally,  we  will  lay  all  even  with  the  ground,  which 
they,  no  less  wickedly  than  cruelly  and  covetously,  have 
enclosed.  Neither  will  we  suffer  ourselves  any  more  to  be 
pressed  with  such  burdens  against  our  wills,  nor  endure  so 
great  shame,  since  living  out  our  days  under  such  incon- 
veniences we  should  leave  the  commonwealth  unto  our 
posterity — mourning,  and  miserable,  and  much  worse  than 
we  received  it  of  our  fathers. 

Wherefore  we  will  try  all  means  ;  neither  will  we  ever  rest 
until  we  have  brought  things  to  our  own  liking. 

We  desire  liberty  and  an  indifferent  (or  equal)  use  of  all 
things.  This  will  we  have.  Otherwise  these  tumults  and 
our  lives  shall  only  be  ended  together. 

Revolutionary  as  this  manifesto  is,  Robert  Ket  is 
seen  all  through  the  rising  exerting  his  authority  on 


228          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

behalf  of  law  and  good  order,  curbing  anarchy  and 
checking  ferocity  in  the  rebel  camp. 

Only  one  day  was  spent  at  Eaton  Wood.  Ket's 
plan  was  to  advance  to  Household,  a  wide  stretch  of 
high,  well-wooded  ground  to  the  east  of  Norwich. 
Here  the  camp  was  fixed  on  July  i2th,  the  river 
having  been  crossed  at  Hailsdon,  and  a  night's  halt 
called  at  Dray  ton — for  the  mayor  of  Norwich, 
Thomas  Cod,  positively  refused  to  allow  the  rebels 
to  pass  through  the  city.  Ket,  anxious  to  unite 
citizens  and  peasants  in  a  common  cause,  willingly 
avoided  altercation,  and  Cod,  alarmed  at  the  rising, 
and  unable  to  dissuade  the  insurgents  from  their 
enterprise,  was  careful  to  refrain  from  all  hostile 
demonstrations.  Cod's  one  purpose  was  to  exclude 
Ket's  army  from  the  city,  and  to  accomplish  this  he 
kept  on  friendly  terms  with  Ket,  even  while  appealing 
to  the  government  to  send  down  troops  to  suppress 
the  rising.  Ket's  purpose  was  to  break  down  landlord 
rule  in  Norfolk,  extend  the  area  of  revolt,  and  to  get 
the  king  to  attend  to  the  complaints  of  his  subjects. 

Ket's  company  at  Mousehold  numbered  no  more 
than  2,600  on  July  i2th  ;  but  the  ringing  of  bells 
and  the  firing  of  beacons  brought  in  thousands  of 
homeless  men.  At  the  end  of  a  week  20,000  men 
were  enrolled  under  the  banner  of  revolt,  and  now 
Ket  had  all  his  work  to  do  in  maintaining  discipline 
and  in  arranging  for  provisions  for  the  camp. 

It  is  clear  Robert  Ket  was  the  right  man  for  a 
leader.1  The  people  trusted  him  and  obeyed  his 

1  "  By  bearing  a  confident  countenance  in  all  his  actions  the  vulgars 
took  him  (Ket)  to  be  both  valiant  and  wise  and  a  fit  man  to  be  their 
commander." — Sir  John  Hay-ward,  Life  of  Ed-ward  VI. 

"  This  Ket  was  a  proper  person  to  be  a  ringleader  of  mischief,  for  he 
was  of  a  bold,  haughty  spirit,  and  of  a  cankered  mind  against  the 
Government." — John  Strype,  Ecclesiastical  Memorials. 


1549]  Robert  Ket  229 

orders.  Cod  and  two  other  reputable  citizens  of 
Norwich — Aldrich,  an  alderman,  and  Watson,  a 
preacher — attended  the  camp  daily,  and  along  with 
Ket  and  his  brother  William  sat  under  a  great  tree, 
known  as  the  Oak  of  Reformation,  and  administered 
justice.  The  20,000  hungry,  disinherited  men 
carried  out  in  as  orderly  way  as  they  could  the 
instructions  they  received. 

Ket's  first  business  was  to  send  to  the  king  a 
plain  statement  of  "  Requests  and  Demands."  He 
knew  what  was  wanted  for  rural  England,  and  re- 
fused to  admit  that  his  purpose  was  disloyal  or  that 
his  conduct  was  rebellion. 

The  "  Requests  "  were  twenty-nine,  and  they  con- 
tained a  full  statement  of  the  grievances  of  the 
country  folk.  The  chief  requests  were  for  the  stop- 
page of  enclosures,  the  enactment  of  fair  rents,  the 
restoration  of  common  fishing  rights  in  sea  and 
river,  the  appointment  of  resident  clergymen  in 
every  parish  to  preach  and  instruct  the  children,  and 
the  free  election  or  official  appointment  of  local 
"  commissioners"  for  the  enforcement  of  the  laws. 
One  significant  prayer  was  "  that  all  bond  men  may 
be  made  free,  for  God  made  all  free  with  His  precious 
bloodshedding. " 

This  document,  which  was  signed  by  Ket,  Cod 
and  Aldrich,1  was  answered  by  the  arrival  of  a 
herald  from  the  king  with  a  promise  that  parliament 
should  meet  in  October  to  consider  their  complaints, 
and  that  something  should  be  done  to  redress  their 

1  These  two  "were  partly  fain  to  agree,  lest  they  being  out  of  favour 
and  place,  others  might  come  to  bring  all  out  of  frame  that  now  might 
partly  be  well  framed,  and  the  rather  they  assented  to  keep  the 
people  in  better  order  during  answer  from  the  prince." — Nicholas 
Sutherton. 


230          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

grievances,  if  in  the  meantime  they  would  quietly 
disperse  to  their  homes. 

All  this  was  too  vague  and  uncertain  for  Ket. 
Not  till  some  definite  step  was  taken  by  king  or 
parliament  to  end  the  present  distress  was  he  willing 
to  lay  down  his  arms  and  bid  his  followers  disperse. 
He  had  put  his  hand  to  the  plough,  and  no  turning 
back  was  possible  while  the  evils  he  had  risen 
against  flourished  unchecked. 

So  Ket  put  his  house  in  order  on  Household 
Heath.  The  Oak  of  Reformation  was  boarded  over 
"with  rafters,"  and  to  this  place  of  summary  justice 
landowners  were  brought  and  tried  for  making 
enclosures.  Two  men  were  chosen  by  the  commons 
from  every  hundred  to  assist  in  the  work  of  adminis- 
tration, and  all  the  people  were  strictly  admonished 
"  to  beware  of  robbing,  spoiling  and  other  evil 
demeanours."  As  the  army  had  to  be  victualled, 
Ket  sent  out  men  armed  with  his  official  warrant 
requiring  the  country  houses  to  provide  cattle  and 
corn,  "so  that  no  violence  or  injury  be  done  to  any 
honest  or  poor  man,"  and  this  requisition  brought  in 
guns,  gunpowder  and  money,  in  addition  to  "all 
kinds  of  victual."  The  smaller  farmers  sent  their  con- 
tributions "with  much  private  good  will,"  while  on 
the  landowners  a  great  fear  had  fallen,  and  it  seemed 
that  the  day  of  their  might  was  passed. 

A  royal  messenger  bearing  commissions  of  the 
peace  to  various  country  gentlemen  falling  into  the 
hands  of  Ket,  he  was  at  once  deprived  of  these 
documents  and  sent  on  his  way.  Ket  filled  in  the 
names  of  men  who  had  joined  the  rising  on  these 
commissions,  and  these  new  magistrates  gave  assist- 
ance in  maintaining  order. 


1549]  Robert  Ket  231 

Cod  and  Aldrich  were  shocked  at  the  arrest  of 
landowners.  "  Notwithstanding  were  divers  gentle- 
men taken  and  brought  to  prison,  some  in  Norwich 
Prison,  some  in  Norwich  Castle  and  some  in  Surrey 
Place." — St.  Leonard's  Hill. 

In  every  case  the  lives  of  the  landowners  were 
spared.  Stern  and  unmoved  by  respect  of  persons 
was  Robert  Ket,  but  there  was  no  taint  of  cruelty, 
meanness  or  bloodthirstiness  in  his  rule.  It  was  not 
his  purpose  to  raise  civil  war  or  leave  a  festering 
sore  of  hatred  by  putting  his  neighbours  to  death. 
To  destroy  the  power  of  the  landlords  and  ensure 
the  right  of  an  evicted  people  to  live  on  the  land  was 
the  aim  of  the  Norfolk  Rising. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  week  relations  became 
strained  between  Cod  and  the  army  on  Mousehold. 

It  was  the  custom  to  have  prayers  every  day  under 
the  Oak,  and  Dr.  Conyers,  vicar  of  St.  Martin's, 
Norwich,  acted  as  chaplain.  "  Grave  persons  and 
good  divines  "  would  come  out  from  the  city  and 
preach  under  the  Oak,  and  on  one  occasion  Dr. 
Matthew  Parker,  a  Norwich  man,  who  had  been 
chaplain  to  Anne  Boleyn,  and  who  was  to  become 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  under  Elizabeth,  filled 
the  pulpit.  Parker's  sermon,  full  of  rebukes  on  the 
rising  and  praise  of  Edward  VI.,  was  so  obnoxious, 
for  "  he  touched  them  for  their  living  so  near  that 
they  went  near  to  touch  him  for  his  life,"  that 
Conyers  only  prevented  a  riot  by  striking  up  the 
"  Te  Deum"in  English,  and  during  the  singing 
Parker  withdrew  "to  sing  his  part  at  home." 

Matthew  Parker  was  a  great  man  in  Norwich  (his 
brother  Thomas  became  mayor),  and  the  incivility 
he  had  received  at  Mousehold  gave  great  offence. 


2  32          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

Cod  and  the  aldermen  sent  off  Leonard  Sutherton, 
a  respectable  burgess,  to  report  to  the  king's  council 
the  doings  in  Norfolk,  and  Sutherton  brought  back 
from  London  a  royal  herald,  who  went  out  to  Mouse- 
hold  and  promised  the  king's  pardon  to  all  that 
would  depart  quietly  to  their  homes. 

The  people  cheered  and  shouted  "  God  save  the 
king's  majesty,"  but  to  Ket  this  talk  of  pardon  was 
altogether  beside  the  mark.  With  some  dignity  he 
informed  the  herald  that  "kings  and  princes  are 
wont  to  pardon  wicked  persons,  not  innocent  and 
just  men,"  and  added,  "  I  trust  I  have  done  nothing 
but  what  belongs  to  the  duty  of  a  true  subject." 

The  herald  then  called  on  John  Petibone,  the 
sword  -  bearer  of  Norwich,  who  with  other  civic 
notables  was  standing  by,  to  arrest  Robert  Ket. 
But  the  thing  was  impossible.  Ket  had  20,000  men 
at  his  back,  and  the  sword-bearer  was  supported  by 
half-a-dozen  elderly  members  of  the  town  council. 
All  that  could  be  done  was  to  escort  the  herald  into 
the  city,  leaving  Ket  to  his  own  devices. 

There  was  no  more  peace  between  the  camp  at 
Mousehold  and  the  city  of  Norwich  after  this. 
Hitherto  Mayor  Cod  had  retained  the  keys  of  the 
city,  and  his  authority  had  been  respected  by  Ket. 
At  the  same  time  Ket's  men  had  gone  freely  to  and 
fro  throughout  the  city  without  let  or  hindrance. 
Now  all  was  changed.  First  the  landowners  were 
being  arrested  and  despoiled,  then  the  learned 
doctor,  Matthew  Parker  (was  he  not  master  of 
Corpus  Christi  College,  Cambridge  ?)  had  been 
interrupted  and  hooted,  and  now  a  king's  herald  was 
contemned  !  Cod  ordered  the  city  gates  to  be  made 
fast,  commanded  Ket's  prisoners  to  be  released,  and 


1549]  Robert  Ket  233 

placed  the  city's  ordnance  in  the  meadows  by  the 
river.  This  amounted  to  a  declaration  of  war,  and 
Ket  replied  by  bringing  up  his  guns. 

The  night  of  July  2ist  was  spent  "  in  fearful  shot 
on  both  sides,"  but  little  injury  was  done.  For 
Ket's  guns  brought  "  more  fear  than  hurt  to  the 
city,"  and  "the  city  ordnance  did  not  much  annoy 
the  enemy." 

In  the  morning  Ket  sought  to  renew  peace  by 
asking  permission  for  the  transport  of  victuals  through 
the  city,  "  as  the  custom  was  of  late,"  and  warning 
the  mayor  that  refusal  would  provoke  fire  and  sword. 

Cod  refused  permission,  and  Ket  opened  fire  on 
the  city  gates.  But  "  for  lack  of  powder  and  want 
of  skill  in  the  gunners  the  ordnance  was  spent  to 
small  and  little  purpose."  A  desperate  encounter 
followed,  with  bows  and  arrows  for  the  chief  weapons 
of  offence.  Boys  from  Mousehold,  "  naked  and  un- 
armed, would  pluck  the  arrows  from  their  bodies 
and  hand  them  to  the  rebels  to  fire  at  the  city."  At 
Bishopsgate  a  number  of  men  swam  the  river  and 
forced  their  way  into  the  city,  and  on  the  night  of 
July  22nd  Norwich  was  in  the  hands  of  Robert 
Ket. 

No  reprisals  followed.  The  herald  made  a  last 
attempt  to  induce  the  insurgents  to  disperse  by  pro- 
mising pardons,  and  was  greeted  derisively.  "  De- 
part with  a  plague  on  thee  !  "  they  cried.  "  To  the 
devil  with  these  idle  promises.  We  shall  only  be 
oppressed  afterwards."  Forthwith  the  herald  did 
depart,  with  eight  pounds  of  gold  in  his  pocket  from 
the  mayor. 

Ket  retired  to  Mousehold,  the  passage  through 
the  city  having  been  secured,  and  Cod  accompanied 


234          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

him,  leaving  a  deputy,  Augustine  Steward,  who 
lived  in  the  big  house  in  Tombland,  opposite  Erfing- 
ham  Gate,  to  act  as  mayor. 

Judgment  went  on  as  before  under  the  Oak  of 
Reformation,  and  people  clamoured  for  the  land- 
owners to  be  hanged.  "  So  hated  at  this  time  was 
the  name  of  worship  or  gentleman,  that  the  basest 
of  the  people,  burning  with  more  than  hostile  hatred, 
desired  to  extinguish,  and  utterly  cut  off,  not  only 
the  gentry  themselves,  but  if  it  were  possible,  all 
the  offspring  and  hope  of  them."  (Nevylle.) 

But  Ket  was  as  strong  in  his  mercy  as  in  his 
resistance  to  the  land  enclosers.  The  gentry  were 
imprisoned,  and  made  to  pay  tribute  :  their  fences 
were  pulled  down,  but  their  lives  were  spared,  and 
no  hurt  befell  them.  In  the  city  Steward,  no  friend 
to  Ket,  was  left  undisturbed  in  authority. 

At  the  end  of  July  came  William  Parr,  Marquis 
of  Northampton,  with  1,500  soldiers,  mostly  Italian 
mercenaries,  and  a  number  of  country  squires  with 
their  retainers,  to  put  down  the  rising.  Steward  at 
once  admitted  him  to  the  city ;  but  Northampton- 
Henry  VIII.'s  brother-in-law — was  neither  a  soldier 
nor  statesman,  and  after  two  days'  hard  fighting  he 
fled  from  Norwich,  utterly  defeated. 

Ket's  men  were  badly  armed,  but  they  had 
numbers  on  their  side,  and  they  fought  for  freedom 
and  for  very  life.  They  swam  the  river,  as  before, 
and  forced  an  entrance.  "  Half  dead,  drowned  in 
their  own  and  other  men's  blood,  they  would  not 
give  over ;  but  till  the  last  gasp,  when  their  hands 
could  scarce  hold  their  weapons,  would  strike  at 
their  adversaries." 

Lord  Sheffield  fell  in  the   fight   on   August   ist, 


1549]  Robert  Ket  235 

killed  by  a  stalwart  rebel — one  Fulke,  a  butcher  and 
carpenter  by  trade — and  some  hundred  of  Ket's  men 
lay  dead.  The  city  suffered.  Several  houses  and 
city  gates  were  fired,  and  only  a  heavy  rain  pre- 
vented the  flames  from  spreading.  (This  same  rain 
drove  many  of  the  rebels  to  take  refuge  in  the 
cathedral,  much  to  the  annoyance  of  the  dean  and 
chapter.) 

And  now  for  three  weeks  Ket  had  to  take  charge 
of  Norwich  as  well  as  of  Mousehold  camp,  for  it  was 
impossible  to  trust  Steward.  Many  of  the  wealthier 
townsmen  hastened  away  to  Cambridge  and  London, 
leaving  their  wives  and  families  behind.  Trade  was 
at  an  end. 

The  state  of  the  city  began  to  be  in  most  miserable  case, 
so  that  all  men  looked  for  utter  destruction,  both  of  life  and 
goods.  Then  the  remnant  that  feared  God,  seeing-  the 
plague  thus  of  sorrow  increasing,  fell  to  prayer  and  holy  life, 
and  wished  but  to  see  the  day  that  after  they  might  talk 
thereover,  looking  never  to  recover  help  again,  nor  to  see 
their  city  prosper. 

The  women  resorted  twice  a  day  to  prayer,  and  the  ser- 
vants (except  what  must  needs  stay  at  home)  did  the  same. 
When  Ket's  ambassadors  were  sent  to  any  private  house  they 
were  fain  to  bake  or  brew  or  do  any  work  for  the  camp,  else 
they  were  carried  as  traitors  to  the  Oak.  As  for  trading, 
there  was  none  in  the  city,  people  being  forced  to  hide  up 
their  choicest  goods,  and  happy  were  they  that  had  the 
faithfullest  servants. 

They  that  did  keep  open  their  shops  were  robbed  and 
spoiled,  and  their  goods  were  measured  by  the  arm's  length 
and  dispersed  among  the  rebels ;  their  children  they  set 
away  for  fear  of  fire.  I,  the  writer  (who  was  then  above 
twenty-two  years  of  age,  and  an  eye-witness)  was  present 
after  prayer  during  this  dolorous  state,  when  people  met  and 
bewailed  the  miserable  state  they  were  in.  (Sutherton.) 

But  for  all  their  misery  the  tradesmen  of  Norwich 


236          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

were  in  no  fear  for  their  lives.  The  city  had  done 
its  best  to  thwart  the  rising,  but  Ket  treated  it 
generously,  allowing  neither  pillage  nor  bloodshed — 
though  he  did  not  scruple  to  take  what  goods  were 
necessary  for  his  army.1  It  was  beyond  the  power 
of  man  to  prevent  all  thieving  during  those  first 
few  weeks  of  August,  for  the  civic  magistracy  was 
gone,  and  Ket  had  large  responsibilities  on  his 
hands. 

The  hope  that  the  rising  would  become  general 
turned  to  disappointment  in  the  weeks  that  passed 
after  the  flight  of  Northampton.  In  Suffolk  a 
number  of  men  rose  at  Ket's  call,  and  made  an 
unsuccessful  attempt  to  take  Yarmouth.  A  small 
camp  set  up  at  Rising  Chase  was  dispersed,  but  for 
a  fortnight  the  peasants  gathered  at  Watton,  and 
stopped  the  passages  of  the  river  at  Thetford  and 
Brandon  Ferry.  For  want  of  leadership  they  then 
came  on  to  Household.  At  Hingham  a  rising  was 
put  down  by  Sir  Edmund  Knyvett.  And  while  Ket 
waited,  hoping  against  hope  for  better  news,  the 
fugitive  citizens  from  Norwich  had  already  per- 
suaded Somerset  to  send  down  an  army  to  crush 
the  revolt. 

On  August  2ist  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  with  14,000 
troops,  reached  Cambridge,  and  three  days  later  was 
at  Norwich. 

Warwick,  Henry  VIII.'s  high  chamberlain,  the 
son  of  Dudley,  Henry  VII.'s  minister,  was  a  man  of 
war  and  resolution.  Sent  down  to  suppress  the 
rising  he  did  his  work,  but  not  till  he  had  tried  an 

1  "  That  a  populous  and  wealthy  city  like  Norwich  should  have  been 
for  three  weeks  in  the  hands  of  20,000  rebels,  and  should  have  escaped 
utter  pillage  and  ruin  speaks  highly  for  the  rebel  leaders." — W.  Rye, 
Victoria  County  History  of  Norfolk. 


1549]  Robert  Ket  237 

appeal  to  the  peasants  to  disperse  without  further 
trouble. 

Halting  outside  the  city,  Warwick  sent  a  herald 
to  proclaim  pardon  to  all  who  should  now  return  to 
their  homes,  and,  as  before,  the  people  shouted, 
"  God  save  King  Edward  !  "  Ket  himself  talked 
with  the  herald  on  the  high  ground  near  Bishop's 
Gate. 

Negotiations  ended  abruptly.  Some  ill-mannered 
boy  gave  an  indecent  and  offensive  salute  to  the 
herald,  and  was  shot  dead  by  an  arrow  from  the 
herald's  escort.  At  once  the  cry  of  "  treachery " 
was  raised  by  the  people,  and  all  talk  of  peace  was 
at  an  end.  While  the  herald  tried  to  persuade  Ket 
to  come  to  the  Earl  of  Warwick  under  a  flag  of 
truce,  the  rebels  gathered  round  their  leader  and 
besought  him  not  to  forsake  them.  To  Ket  there 
could  be  sure  reliance  on  royal  promises  of  pardon, 
and  no  surrender  of  the  charge  he  had  undertaken. 
His  reply  to  the  herald  was  to  retire  on  Mousehold 
and  prepare  for  battle. 

Warwick  at  once  entered  the  city,  and  began  the 
business  of  pacification  by  promptly  hanging  sixty 
men  in  the  Market  Place,  by  Norwich  Castle, 
"without  hearing  the  cause  "  ;  and  by  issuing  a  pro- 
clamation that  all  who  were  out  of  doors  would 
receive  similar  treatment.  Then  came  a  mishap,  for 
the  greater  part  of  Warwick's  artillery  fell  into  Ket's 
hands.  The  drivers  of  the  gun-carriages,  entering 
the  city  after  the  soldiers,  by  St.  Bennet's  Gate  on 
the  west,  and  ignorant  of  the  way,  actually  passed 
out  at  Bishop's  Gate  on  the  east  on  the  very  road 
towards  Mousehold,  and  were  quickly  taken.  Ket 
had  now  the  advantage  in  ordnance,  and  there  was 


238          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

fighting  in  the  city  all  Sunday,  August  25th.  So 
uncertain  was  the  issue  that  the  burgesses  feared 
Warwick  would  suffer  Northampton's  fate,  and 
prayed  him  to  depart  without  further  loss.  But 
Warwick,  waiting  for  reinforcements,  and  knowing 
that  1,400  German  mercenaries  were  close  at  hand, 
was  not  the  man  to  beat  an  ignominious  retreat. 

The  hireling  "lanznechts"  arrived  next  day,  and 
on  Tuesday,  August  27th,  came  the  fatal  battle. 

Instead  of  remaining  at  Household,  where  a 
strong  resistance  might  have  been  made,  the  rebels 
decided  to  march  out  boldly  from  their  camp  and 
meet  the  king's  army  in  the  open  country  that  lay 
between  Mousehold  Heath  and  the  city.  An  old 
song  was  recalled,  which,  it  seemed,  foretold  victory 
in  such  a  case  : 

The  country  gnoffes  (churls),   Hob,   Dick,  and  Rick, 
With  clubs  and  clouted  shoon, 
Shall  fill  the  vale 
Of  Dussindale 
With  slaughtered  bodies  soon. 

But  the  country  churls  were  to  be  the  slaughtered, 
and  not  the  slaughterers. 

Warwick  marched  out  by  the  north-east  gate  of 
St.  Martin-at-the-Oak,  and  for  the  last  time  a  herald 
promised  pardon  to  all  who  would  surrender.  But 
the  hangings  in  the  market  place  had  destroyed  all 
confidence  in  such  proclamations,  and  the  answer  to 
the  herald  was  that  they  "  perceived  this  pardon  to 
be  nothing  else  but  a  cask  full  of  ropes  and  halters." 

Ket's  judgment  failed  him  utterly  on  that  last 
day  of  the  rising.  On  the  strength  of  an  irrelevant 
old  song  he  allowed  his  army  to  go  to  its  doom  un- 


1549]  Robert  Ket  239 

checked,  and  at  the  very  time  when  good  general- 
ship was  wanted  above  all  other  things,  Robert  Ket 
seems  to  have  lost  his  nerve,  and  to  have  been 
struck  by  some  paralysis  of  the  will,  as  though 
conscious  of  impending  ruin. 

The  peasants  poured  down  into  the  valley,  and 
into  the  meadows  beyond  Magdalen  and  Pockthorp 
Gates,  and  fought  with  desperate  courage,  but  they 
were  simply  cut  to  pieces  by  the  professional  soldiery. 
At  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  it  was  all  over,  the 
defeat  utter  and  complete,  and  Robert  Ket  and  his 
brother  were  in  flight. 

The  remains  of  the  rebel  army  laid  down  their 
arms,  when  Warwick  himself  offered  pardon  in  the 
king's  name  to  those  who  would  surrender. 

The  rising  was  at  an  end.  The  foreign  mercen- 
aries of  the  crown  had  triumphed  over  English 
peasants.  Robert  Ket  was  taken  the  same  night  at 
Swannington,  eight  miles  north  of  Norwich.  He 
had  ridden  away  from  the  battle  when  the  field  was 
lost,  but  horse  and  rider  were  too  tired  to  proceed 
further.  Taking  refuge  in  a  barn,  he  was  recognized 
by  some  men  unloading  a  wagon  of  corn  and  seized. 
The  farmer's  wife  "rated  him  for  his  conduct,  but  he 
only  prayed  her  to  be  quiet,  and  to  give  him  meat." 
That  same  night  William  Ket  was  taken,  and  the 
two  brothers  were  delivered  to  the  lord  lieutenant  of 
the  county,  and  by  him  carried  to  London  to  be 
tried  for  their  lives. 

At  Household  Warwick  proved  the  worth  of  the 
pardons  he  had  given  by  first  having  nine  of  the 
bravest  of  the  peasants  hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered 
under  the  Oak  of  Reformation,  and  distributing 
their  bodies  in  the  city  ;  and  then  by  hanging  300 


240          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

prisoners  on  trees,  and  then  forty-nine  more  at  the 
Market  Cross  in  Norwich.  The  country  gentlemen 
of  Norfolk,  backed  by  their  wealthier  citizens,  called 
for  more  executions,  till  Warwick  turned  with  disgust 
from  the  vindictive  clamour  of  these  bloodthirsty 
civilians,  and  pointed  out  in  impatient  reproof  that 
no  one  would  be  left  "  to  plough  and  harrow  over 
the  lands  "  if  all  the  peasants  were  massacred. 

And  now  the  king's  authority  having  been  re- 
established, a  public  service  of  thanksgiving  was 
held  in  the  church  of  St.  Peter,  Mancroft,  and 
August  27th  was  ordered  to  be  observed  henceforth 
as  "  Thanksgiving  Day "  in  Norwich.  (This  was 
done  by  prayers  and  sermon  until  1667.  In  the 
grammar  school,  during  Elizabeth's  reign,  an  account 
of  the  rising  —  De  Furoribus  Norfolciensum, 
written  in  Latin  by  Nevylle,  and  violently  anti- 
popular  in  expression — was  ordered  to  be  used  as  a 
text  book  in  place  of  the  usual  classics,  and  was  so 
used  for  some  years.) 

On  September  7th  Warwick  returned  to  London.1 
In  November  Robert  and  William  Ket,  after  lying 
in  the  Tower  for  two  months,  were  brought  to  trial. 
They  offered  no  defence  for  what  they  had  done  :  for 
having  borne  arms  without  the  king's  permission, 
and  for  having  striven  to  stop  the  robbery  and 
oppression  of  the  peasant  without  the  authority  of 
king  and  parliament. 

1  A  few  years  later,  and  John  Dudley,  Earl  of  Warwick,  now  Duke  of 
Northumberland,  again  visited  East  Anglia  to  proclaim  his  daughter-in- 
law,  Lady  Jane  Grey,  Queen  of  England.  No  one  rose  at  his  call. 
Neither  peasant  nor  landowner  responded  to  the  proclamation ;  and 
John  Dudley,  Earl  of  Warwick  and  Duke  of  Northumberland,  died,  as 
his  father  before  him  had  died,  convicted  of  treason,  beheaded  by  the 
executioner's  axe  on  Tower  Hill.  It  was  August  22nd,  1553,  just  four 
years  after  the  suppression  of  the  peasants'  rising  in  Norfolk  when 
Northumberland  was  put  to  death. 


1549]  Robert  Ket  241 

On  November  26th  they  were  found  guilty  of  high 
treason,  their  property  confiscated,  and  they  were 
condemned  to  death.  On  November  29th  they  were 
delivered  out  of  the  custody  of  the  Tower  to  the 
high  sheriff  of  Norfolk,  and  on  December  ist  the 
Kets  were  again  in  Norwich. 

It  was  winter,  and  hope  was  dead.  The  last 
great  rising  of  the  English  peasantry  had  failed, 
crushed  without  pity,  and  the  leaders  of  the  army  of 
revolt,  who  had  judged  it  better  to  give  up  ease  and 
worldly  honour  rather  than  acquiesce  dumbly  in  the 
enslavement  of  their  poorer  neighbours,  were  to  die 
as  traitors.1  On  December  7th  the  executions  were 
carried  out,  and  Robert  Ket  was  hanged  in  chains 
outside  Norwich  Castle,  while  William  Ket  was 
taken  to  Wymondham  (where  he  held  the  manor  of 
Chossell — Church  lands,  bought  years  earlier  from 
the  Earl  of  Warwick),  and  there  hanged  in  chains 
from  the  parish  church. 

The  property  of  the  Kets  was  duly  taken  by  the 
servants  of  the  crown,  and  the  bodies  of  the  rebel 
leaders  swung  in  the  wind — to  remind  unthinking 
men  of  the  reward  of  rebellion,  of  the  fate  of  all 
who  challenge,  without  success,  the  arms  of  govern- 
ment. 

The  Norfolk  Rising  was  the  last  great  movement 
of  the  English  people  in  social  revolt.  Riots  we 
have  known  even  in  our  times,  and  mob  violence, 

1  "Robert  Ket  was  not  a  mere  craftsman  :  he  was  a  man  of  sub- 
stance, the  owner  of  several  manors  :  his  conduct  throughout  was 
marked  by  considerable  generosity :  nor  can  the  name  of  patriot  be 
denied  to  him  who  deserted  the  class  to  which  he  might  have  belonged 
or  aspired,  and  cast  in  his  lot  with  the  suffering  people." — Canon  Dixon, 
History  of  the  Church  of  England. 

In  1588  a  grandson  of  Robert  Ket  was  burnt  as  a  Nonconformist 
heretic  by  order  of  Elizabeth. 


2^.2          Leaders  of  the  People          [1549 

but  no  such  rising  as  those  led  by  Wat  Tyler,  by 
Cade,  and  by  Ket  has  England  seen  since  the  year 

1549- 

The  country  people  sunk  into  hopeless  poverty 
and  permanent  degradation  under  Edward  VI.  and 
Elizabeth,  and  with  the  rejection  by  the  government 
of  papal  authority,  the  supremacy  of  the  crown  and 
of  the  ministers  of  the  crown  was  established. 

In  the  nineteenth  century,  when  the  working 
people  in  town  and  country  once  more  bestirred 
themselves  at  the  call  of  freedom,  their  wiser  leaders 
advised  political  and  not  revolutionary  methods  of 
action,  and  the  advice  has  been  followed. 

But  if  the  year  1549  marks  the  end  of  organized 
democratic  resistance  to  intolerable  misgovernment, 
the  coming  centuries  were  to  see  the  rise  of  the 
middle  class  with  the  insistent  demand  for  the  pre- 
dominance of  that  class  in  the  parliament  of  the 
nation,  and  the  incurable  belief  that  in  a  popularly 
elected  House  of  Commons  resided  all  the  safe- 
guards of  civil  and  religious  liberty. 


Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym,  and  the 
Supremacy  of  the  Commons. 

1625-1643 


AUTHORITIES  :  S.  R.  Gardiner — History  of  England, 
History  of  Great  Civil  War,  History  of  Common- 
wealth and  Protectorate ;  Clarendon — History  of  the 
Great  Rebellion;  John  Forster  —  Life  of  Sir  John 
Eliot,  Life  of  Hampden,  Life  of  Pym,  The  Grand 
Remonstrance,  Arrest  of  the  Five  Members  ;  Nugent 
— Memorials  for  Life  of  Hampden ;  Calendar  of  State 
Papers  ;  House  of  Commons'  Journals. 


SIR    JOHN    ELIOT 

(From  a  Steel  EngraYtng  by  William  Holl.) 


ELIOT,  HAMPDEN,  PYM, 
AND  THE  SUPREMACY 
OF  THE  COMMONS. 

1625-1643 

JOHN  ELIOT,  John  Hampden,  John  Pym— by 
the  work  of  these  men  comes  the  supremacy 
of  the  House  of  Commons  in  the  government 
of  England. 

All  three  are  country  gentlemen  of  good  estate,  of 
high  principle  and  of  some  learning.1  They  are  men 
of  religious  convictions,  of  courage  and  resolution, 
and  of  blameless  personal  character.  Two  of  them 
— Eliot  and  Hampden — are  content  to  die  for  the 
cause  of  good  government. 

The  strong  rule  of  Elizabeth  left  a  difficult  legacy 
of  government  to  James  I.  The  despotism  of  the 
queen  had  been  forgiven  in  the  success  of  her  State 
policy  ;  and  if  she  had  no  high  opinion  of  parliament, 
Elizabeth  had  ministers  who  fairly  represented  the 
mind  of  the  English  middle  class.  Elizabeth's  abso- 
lutism in  Church  and  State  was  the  direct  following 
of  Henry  VIII.,  and  only  at  the  very  close  of  her 
reign  was  it  threatened  by  the  discontent  of  parlia- 
ment. With  a  shrewd  instinct  for  popularity  Eliza- 
beth at  once  yielded.  Like  her  father,  she  saw  the 
importance  of  retaining  parliament  on  the  side  of  the 
crown  and  making  it  the  instrument  of  the  royal 

1  The  three  were  Oxford  men.  Sir  John  Eliot  was  at  Exeter  (1607), 
Hampden  at  Magdalen  (1609)  and  Pym  at  Broadg-ate  Hall,  afterwards 
called  Pembroke  (1599). 

245 


246          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

will.  There  was  no  idea  in  the  Tudor  mind  of 
parliament  sharing  the  government  with  the  crown. 
The  business  of  the  House  of  Commons  of  Elizabeth 
was  to  express  its  opinion  and  then  decree  the  pro- 
posals of  the  crown.  "  Liberty  of  speech  was  granted 
in  respect  of  the  aye  or  no,  but  not  that  everybody 
should  speak  what  he  listed."  (1592.) 

In  religion  Elizabeth  had  done  her  worst  to  exter- 
minate the  Roman  Catholic  faith,  and  by  the  fierce- 
ness of  her  persecution  had  kindled  undying  enthu- 
siasm for  the  old  beliefs  and  worship.  But  forty 
years  of  repression  did  their  work,  and  a  generation 
arose  which  only  knew  Catholicism  as  the  faith  of  a 
proscribed  and  unpatriotic  sect,  who  denied  the  abso- 
lute sovereignty  of  the  crown  and  had  another 
sovereign  at  Rome — the  religion  of  Spain — popery, 
in  short  :  a  faith  worse  than  Mahomedanism  or 
heathenism — the  scarlet  woman  of  the  Apocalypse — 
according  to  the  fierce  Puritan  expounders  of  the 
Bible,  and  not  to  be  counted  as  Christianity.  That 
this  very  Roman  Catholicism — so  hateful  because 
the  penal  laws  kept  it  hidden  and  unknown,  and 
because  it  was  the  religion  of  Spain,  then  the  national 
enemy — had  been  the  religion  of  all  England  for 
centuries,  and  that  under  it  the  earliest  charters  of 
public  liberty  had  been  wrung  from  the  crown,  and 
the  principle  of  a  representative  parliament  estab- 
lished, were  facts  uncontemplated. 

But  Elizabeth,  while  persecuting  Roman  Catholics, 
had  left  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  of  the 
Church  of  England  a  sanction  for  ceremonial  and 
for  episcopal  ordination,  and  a  body  of  doctrine  which 
were  to  be  interpreted  under  the  Stuarts  by  certain 
Anglican  divines  as  witnesses  to  Catholicism.  Such 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          247 

interpretation  was  to  be  found  in  Elizabeth's  reign  as 
a  pious  opinion.  With  Laud  it  was  an  active  prin- 
ciple, and  it  brought  him  to  the  scaffold.  The 
Elizabethan  bishops  in  the  main  were  thoroughly 
Protestant,  the  queen  was  the  head  of  the  Church  of 
England,  and  the  ritual  of  the  Church  prescribed  by 
her  was  reduced  to  a  simplicity  that  average  Pro- 
testants could  accept. 

If  Elizabeth  burnt  anabaptists  and  hanged  other 
nonconformists,  her  excuse  was  that  the  Church  of 
England  was  sufficiently  Protestant  to  include  all 
well-affected  persons.  The  extreme  Puritans  whom 
she  persecuted  had  this  in  common  with  the  Roman 
Catholics,  that  neither  accepted  the  absolute  supre- 
macy of  the  crown,  and  the  best  Puritan  teaching 
in  England,  even  when  it  counselled  conformity  to 
the  Established  Church,  was  creating  a  mind  and 
temper  that  only  found  expression  in  the  Common- 
wealth. 

James  I.  came  to  the  throne  in  1603  prepared  to 
carry  on  the  Tudor  absolutism.  He  failed  because 
he  had  neither  Elizabeth's  ministers  nor  her  know- 
ledge of  the  English  country  landowners.  James 
never  realised  that  Spain  was  the  popular  enemy, 
that  a  discontent  had  suddenly  grown  up  in  parlia- 
ment in  the  last  years  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  and  that 
the  English  landowners — in  many  cases  from  their 
inherited  possession  of  the  old  Church  lands — were 
generally  bitterly  hostile  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
religion.  James  was  tolerent  in  religion,  and  not 
inclined  to  press  Elizabeth's  penal  laws  against 
Roman  Catholics,  and  this  very  toleration  brought  him 
under  the  dislike  of  the  country  party.  He  thought 
he  could  disregard  the  opinion  of  parliament  and  he 


248          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

found  that  while  a  House  of  Commons  submitted 
to  a  despotism  when  the  country  was  governed 
by  a  strong  queen,  it  would  not  put  up  with  the 
follies  and  extravagance  of  the  Duke  of  Bucking- 
ham. 

James  died  before  the  strength  of  the  growing 
movement  for  parliamentary  government  was  seen. 
Charles  who  was  no  more  tyrannical  than  his  father, 
but  even  more  blind  to  the  signs  of  the  times,  fell 
before  that  parliamentary  movement — a  movement 
which  outraged  all  the  traditions  of  Tudor  government 
— and  with  his  fall  brought  down  the  throne,  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  the  Established  Church.  By 
his  inability  to  understand  the  House  of  Commons, 
by  his  support  of  the  Anglican  movement  towards 
Catholicism  in  the  Church  of  England,  and  by  the 
mistakes  of  his  ministers,  Charles  ripened  the 
desire  for  constitutional  monarchy  till  the  desire  was 
irresistible. 

John  Eliot  gave  forcible  utterance  to  this  desire, 
and  died  in  prison  for  his  speech.  John  Pym 
carried  on  the  work  till  the  sword  of  civil  war  was 
drawn.  John  Hampden,  "  the  noblest  type  of 
parliamentary  opposition,"  was  content  to  back  Pym 
as  he  had  earlier  backed  Eliot,  and  to  die  on  Chal- 
grove  Field.  Brought  up  to  regard  as  an  alien 
creed  the  old  belief  in  papal  supremacy  in  religion, 
unable  to  accept  the  new  doctrine  of  the  Church  of 
England  that  the  king  was  supreme  by  divine  right 
(a  doctrine  begotten  by  the  Tudors  and  dying  with 
the  Stuarts),  Eliot,  Hampden,  and  Pym  were  all  of 
the  same  Puritan  type  which  found  its  authority  in 
the  individual  conscience. 

Eliot  was  less  afflicted  than  his  colleagues  by  the 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          249 

theological  Protestantism  of  the  age.1  First  and 
last  he  was  the  straightforward  country  gentleman, 
with  exalted  views  on  the  sacred  responsibility  of 
civil  government,  and  a  high  standard  of  personal 
honour.  For  Eliot  there  was  no  nobler  sphere  of 
work  for  an  Englishman  than  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  his  example  has  not  been  without 
followers.  Seneca  and  Cicero  are  on  his  lips,  as  the 
later  Puritans  had  the  Bible  on  theirs,  and  his 
eloquence  marks  the  beginning  of  parliamentary 
oratory.  With  a  strong  and  clear  view  of  constitu- 
tional government,  Eliot  was  no  republican  ;  he  held 
to  the  notion  that  the  king  must  depend  on  the 
decisions  of  parliament.  Time  was  to  show  that 
this  notion,  in  the  event  of  a  collision  between  king 
and  parliament,  was  to  make  parliament  the  pre- 
dominant partner. 

On  his  first  entry  into  the  House  of  Commons  as 
member  for  St.  Germans,  in  1614,  Eliot  was  the 
friend  of  Buckingham — whom  he  had  met  as  a  youth 
abroad — and  on  Buckingham's  rise  to  the  lord  high 
admiralship  Eliot  was  knighted  and  became  vice- 
admiral  of  Devon. 

The  fidelity  of  his  service  to  the  State  as  vice- 
admiral  brought  an  unpleasant  experience  of  the 
will  of  princes.  Grappling  with  the  scourge  of 
piracy  which  afflicted  the  seaports  and  shipping 

1  "In  Eliot's  composition  there  was  nothing  of  the  dogmatic  ortho- 
doxy of  Calvinism,  nothing  of  the  painful  introspection  of  the  later 
Puritans.  His  creed,  as  it  shines  clearly  out  from  the  work  of  his 
prison  hours,  as  death  was  stealing  upon  him — The  Monarchy  of  Man — 
was  the  old  heathen  philosophic  creed,  mellowed  and  spiritualised  by 
Christianity.  Between  such  a  creed  and  Rome  there  was  a  great  gulf 
fixed.  Individual  culture  and  the  nearest  approach  to  individual  perfec- 
tion for  the  sake  of  the  State  and  the  Church,  formed  a  common  ground 
on  which  Eliot  could  stand  with  the  narrowest  Puritan." — S.  R.  Gardiner. 


250          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

trade  of  the  West  of  England,  Eliot  accomplished 
the  arrest  of  Nutt,  a  notorious  sea-robber.  But 
Nutt  had  friends  in  high  places,  and  Eliot  found 
himself  lodged  in  the  Marshalsea  prison  over  the 
business.  He  was  released  on  Buckingham's  return 
from  the  continent,  for  the  charges  were  absurd, 
and  in  1624  returned  to  the  House  of  Commons  as 
member  for  Newport.  Two  years  later  Eliot  was 
estranged  from  Buckingham — convinced  that  the 
favourite  of  the  king  was  an  evil  counsellor — and 
had  become  the  recognized  leader  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  Once  assured  in  his  mind  that  Bucking- 
ham was  responsible  for  the  policy  of  the  king, 
Eliot  became  his  implacable  opponent.  For  the 
policy  of  the  crown  in  not  making  war  upon  Spain, 
in  relaxing  the  penal  laws  against  Roman  Catholics, 
and  for  the  mismanagement  of  the  war  on  the  con- 
tinent in  support  of  the  Protestants,  Eliot  held 
Buckingham  responsible.  In  answer  to  the  demand 
of  Charles  for  money  in  1626,  Eliot  insisted  that  an 
inquiry  into  past  disasters  should  precede  supply, 
and  that  Buckingham  should  be  impeached.  Not 
the  king  but  his  minister  is  to  blame,  Eliot  maintained, 
for  all  that  was  wrong  in  the  State,  and  this  very 
speech  strikes  the  note  of  the  campaign  that  was 
beginning.  Buckingham  was  not  responsible  to 
Charles  alone,  in  the  eyes  of  Eliot  and  his  friends, 
but  also  to  parliament.1 

Charles,  quite  unable  to  fathom  the  depth  of  the 
parliamentary  discontent,  or  to  note  the  strength  of 
the  current  against  absolutism,  fell  back  upon  the 

1  Eliot's  argument  "  was  a  claim  to  render  ministerial  responsibility 
once  more  a  reality,  and  thereby  indirectly  to  make  parliament 
supreme." — S.  R.  Gardiner. 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym  251 

old  Tudor  doctrine  of  sovereignty,  the  doctrine  of 
the  high  Anglican  party  in  the  Church  of  England, 
that  the  king  was  responsible  for  his  acts  to  God 
alone.  "  Parliaments  are  altogether  in  my  calling," 
he  replies  to  the  House  of  Commons. 

Only  twenty-five  years  had  passed  since  Bacon 
had  declared,  "  the  Queen  hath  both  enlarging  and 
restraining  power  :  she  may  set  at  liberty  things 
restrained  by  Statute,  and  may  restrain  things  which 
be  at  liberty."  Twenty-three  years  more  were 
to  see  monarchy  abolished  and  the  king  beheaded. 
Eliot,  standing  midway  between  Bacon  and  Bradshaw, 
cleaves  to  the  theory  of  constitutional  government 
and  persists  in  the  impeachment  of  a  minister  in 
whom  parliament  had  no  confidence. 

The  prologue  of  impeachment  declared  in  the 
plainest  language  the  responsibility  of  the  king's 
ministers  to  parliament,  and  the  responsibility  of 
parliament  to  the  nation  :  "  The  laws  of  England 
have  taught  us  that  kings  cannot  command  ill  or 
unlawful  things,  and  whatsoever  ill  event  succeed, 
the  executioners  of  such  designs  must  answer  for 
them." 

And  now  the  issue  was  fairly  set,  and  the  battle 
begun  between  Charles  and  the  House  of  Commons. 
In  that  year,  1626,  no  man  in  England  could  foretell 
the  result. 

Charles,  ill-advised  to  the  end,  believed  he  could 
overawe  the  Commons  by  a  display  of  might,  and 
was  beaten.  Twice  he  had  Eliot  arrested  before  the 
final  imprisonment  which  ended  Eliot's  life. 

The  loyalty  of  the  House  of  Commons  to  its 
leader  compelled  Charles  to  release  Eliot,  after  send- 
ing him  to  the  Tower  for  his  attack  on  Buckingham. 


2  52          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

Then  dissolving  parliament  in  June,  1626,  and 
falling  back  on  a  forced  loan,  the  king  was  met 
by  wide  refusals,  and  Eliot,  with  Hampden  and 
others,  suffered  imprisonment  over  this.  Eliot  was 
also  deprived  of  his  vice-admiralship  and  struck  off 
the  roll  of  justices  of  the  peace. 

Driven  to  call  a  parliament  for  the  third  time  in 
1628,  the  king  was  faced  by  a  stronger  opposition 
than  ever. 

Eliot,  now  member  for  Cornwall,  throughout  the 
session  continued  the  attack  on  arbitrary  taxation, 
and  with  the  lawyers  Seldon  and  Coke  carried  the 
Petition  of  Right  to  stop  the  illegal  imprisonments, 
the  enforced  billeting  of  soldiers,  and  forced  loans. 
Buckingham,  slain  at  Portsmouth,  no  longer  troubled 
the  commonwealth  ;  but  Wentworth,  ambitious  to 
use  his  powers  in  the  service  of  the  government, 
had  left  the  popular  side  for  the  king ;  while  Laud, 
and  Weston,  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  were 
daily  preaching  to  Charles  the  divine  right  of  kings 
and  to  his  subjects  the  duty  of  passive  obedience. 

The  following  year  both  Eliot  and  Pym  attacked 
the  ecclesiastical  policy  of  Laud.  To  them  the 
established  religion  of  England,  settled  on  the  Pro- 
testant basis  by  Elizabeth,  was  being  definitely 
changed  in  a  Catholic  direction  without  the  sanction 
of  parliament,  and  in  the  very  teeth  of  the  opposi- 
tion of  the  House  of  Commons.  High -church 
clergymen,  like  Montague  and  Mainwaring,  holding 
to  the  full  a  Catholic  interpretation  of  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer,  were  only  censured  by  the  House 
of  Commons  to  be  promoted  by  the  crown.  Laud 
preaching  a  royal  supremacy  undreamt  of  by  the 
great  archbishops  before  Henry  VIII.,  combined 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          253 

with  it  a  doctrine  of  ecclesiastical  independence, 
owning  no  allegiance  to  Rome,  equally  novel. 

Eliot,  stoical  in  his  beliefs,  and  Pym,  whose  Cal- 
vinism was  tempered  by  common  sense,  regarded 
with  horror  the  revival  in  the  Church  of  England  of 
Catholic  doctrines  concerning  the  sacraments  and 
the  priesthood.  They  had  done  what  they  could  to 
check  any  indulgence  to  Roman  Catholics  in 
England,  and  it  was  monstrous  to  them  that  the 
Church  of  England,  whose  formularies  and  ritual 
had  been  defined  by  parliament  for  the  maintenance 
of  Protestantism,  should  be  expanded  to  reintroduce 
doctrines  and  practices  essentially  Catholic.  But 
for  the  time  the  House  of  Commons  was  powerless 
in  the  matter,  and  only  sixteen  years  later  was  Laud 
to  expiate  on  the  scaffold  his  Anglo-Catholicism, 
dying  a  veritable  martyr  for  the  high  Anglican 
doctrine.  "  None  have  gone  about  to  break  parlia- 
ments but  in  the  end  parliaments  have  broken 
them,"  declared  Eliot  on  March  2nd,  1629,  and 
Laud,  no  less  than  Charles  and  Wentworth,  was  to 
prove  the  truth  of  the  warning. 

If  parliament  could  do  nothing  in  that  year,  1629, 
to  stop  Laud's  policy,  it  could  at  least  defend  the 
privileges  of  its  members.  The  goods  of  John 
Rolle,  M.P.,  had  been  seized  by  the  king's  officers 
because  their  owner  had  refused  to  pay  tonnage  and 
poundage  on  demand,  and  at  once  Eliot  was  up  in 
arms  in  defence  of  the  privileges  of  his  fellow 
member,  whose  liberties  had  been  interfered  with. 

Pym  was  for  a  wider  view  of  the  matter — object- 
ing to  the  question  being  narrowed  down  to  a  breach 
of  privilege.  "  The  liberties  of  this  House,"  he 
argued,  "are  inferior  to  the  liberties  of  this  king- 


254          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

dom.  To  determine  the  privilege  of  this  House  is 
but  a  mean  matter,  and  the  main  end  is  to  establish 
possession  of  the  subjects,  and  to  take  off  the  com- 
mission and  records  and  orders  that  are  against  us." 
With  Pym  it  was  not  Rolle,  the  member,  who  had 
been  ill-used,  but  Rolle  the  British  subject,  and  it 
was  for  the  liberties  of  the  subject  he  strove,  holding 
the  freedom  of  parliament  as  but  a  means  to  that  end. 

Eliot,  a  House  of  Commons  man,  through  and 
through,  saw  in  the  welfare  of  parliament  the 
welfare  of  the  nation,  and  stuck  to  his  point,  carry- 
ing the  House  with  him,  that  the  privileges  of  a 
member  extended  to  his  goods.  To  this  Charles 
sent  word  that  what  had  been  done  had  been  done 
by  his  authority.  The  only  question  now  was,  how 
long  would  it  be  before  the  king  dissolved  parliament. 

On  the  second  of  March,  when  the  House  met, 
the  speaker's  first  word  was  that  the  king  had 
ordered  an  adjournment  till  the  tenth,  and  that  no 
business  could  be  transacted.  Eliot  insisted  on 
moving  his  resolutions,  and  the  speaker  was  held 
down  in  his  chair.  Then  the  serjeant-at-arms 
attempted  to  remove  the  mace,  and  was  promptly 
stopped,  while  the  key  of  the  House  was  turned 
from  within. 

Eliot  moved  his  declaration,  beginning  with  the 
famous  words  :  "  By  the  ancient  laws  and  liberties  of 
England,  it  is  the  known  birthright  and  inheritance 
of  the  subject,  that  no  tax,  tallage,  or  other  charge 
shall  be  levied  or  imposed  but  by  common  consent 
in  England ;  and  that  the  subsidies  of  tonnage  and 
poundage  are  no  way  due  or  payable  but  by  a  free 
gift  and  special  act  of  parliament." 

The  resolutions  were  carried  with  loud  shouts  of 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym  255 

assent,  two  members  guarding  the  speaker,  and  the 
door  was  flung  open  ;  the  sitting  was  over. 

A  royal  proclamation  for  dissolving  parliament 
followed  on  the  fourth  of  March,  and  Eliot,  with  eight 
other  members,  was  summoned  to  appear  before  the 
Privy  Council. 

From  the  hour  of  that  summons  John  Eliot's  liberty 
was  over,  and  not  for  eleven  years  was  England  to 
have  another  parliament. 

For  the  fourth  time  Eliot  was  a  prisoner.  He 
declined  altogether  to  give  an  account  of  what  he 
had  said  in  parliament,  or  to  acknowledge  any  right 
of  interference  with  the  proceedings  in  parliament. 
To  the  crown  lawyers  his  reply  was  to  stand  on  the 
privileges  of  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
"  I  refuse  to  answer,"  he  said,  "because  I  hold  that 
it  is  against  the  privilege  of  parliament  to  speak  of 
anything  which  is  done  in  the  House."  He  insisted 
that  he  was  accountable  to  the  House  alone,  and 
that  no  other  power  existed  with  a  constitutional 
right  to  inquire  into  his  conduct  there. 

At  the  end  of  October  Eliot  was  removed  from 
the  Tower  to  the  Marshalsea,  and  then  in  January, 
1630,  he  was  charged  in  the  King's  Bench  with  two 
other  members,  Holies  and  Valentine,  with  conspir- 
ing to  resist  the  king's  lawful  order,  to  calumniate 
ministers  of  the  crown,  and  to  assault  the  speaker. 
Again  Eliot  refused  to  acknowledge  the  jurisdiction. 
He  was  fined  ^2,000,  and  sent  back  to  the  Tower. 

To  the  last  Eliot's  loyalty  to  the  House  of 
Commons  remained  unshaken.  He  had  but  to 
acknowledge  that  he  had  done  wrong,  to  admit  that 
he  had  offended,  and  the  prison  doors  would  have 
opened  to  him.  But  to  make  this  acknowledgment 


2  56          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

was  to  deny  the  sacred  liberty  of  parliament,  to 
admit  wrong  was  to  betray  the  House  of  Commons. 
To  John  Eliot  the  welfare  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons was  a  national  cause — dearer  than  life.  To 
betray  its  honour  was  to  betray  the  State.  The 
loyalty  of  John  Eliot  to  the  House  of  Commons  was 
interwoven  with  his  devotion  to  the  State,  but  it 
was  something  England  had  never  seen  before,  and 
never  saw  again.  "He  learned  to  believe,  as  no 
other  man  believed  before  or  after  him,  in  the 
representatives  of  the  nation."  (Gardiner.) 

The  character  and  temperament  of  Eliot  must  be 
taken  into  account  in  understanding  this  passionate 
belief  in  the  House  of  Commons.  It  was  not  as  a 
great  thinker  but  as  a  great  orator  he  had  risen  to 
the  leadership  of  the  House  of  Commons.  He  saw 
in  his  mind,  as  no  other  man  saw  at  the  time,  a  per- 
fectly balanced  constitution  of  king,  lords,  and 
commons.  In  parliament  was  the  best  wisdom  of 
the  country  placed  at  the  service  of  the  crown.  In 
the  crown  was  the  appointed  ruler  who,  with  his 
ministers,  had  but  to  come  to  parliament  for  advice 
and  counsel.  So  it  seemed  to  John  Eliot  ;  and 
single-minded  himself,  he  could  not  realise  that  in 
the  House  of  Commons  were  plenty  of  men  of  but 
passing  honesty,  and  that  Charles  and  Laud  and 
Wentworth  were  fundamentally  opposed  to  his  views 
of  constitutional  government,  and  bitterly  hostile  to 
the  growing  powers  of  the  commons.1 

1  "He  (Eliot)  was  to  the  bottom  of  his  heart  an  idealist.  To  him  the 
parliament  was  scarcely  a  collection  of  fallible  men,  just  as  the  king- 
was  hardly  a  being-  who  could  by  any  possibility  go  deliberately 
astray.  If  he  who  wore  the  crown  had  wandered  from  the  right  path, 
he  had  but  to  listen  to  those  who  formed,  in  more  than  a  rhetorical 
sense,  the  collective  wisdom  of  the  nation." — S.  R.  Gardiner. 


JOHN    PYM 

(From  an  EngraYing  hy  Jacob  Houbraken.) 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym  257 

Months  passed,  and  John  Eliot's  health  gave 
way  in  the  confinement  in  the  Tower,  but  his 
steadfastness  was  unchanged.  He  corresponded 
with  his  friend  John  Hampden,  wrote  his  treatise 
on  the  Monarchy  of  Man,  and  calmly  awaited  his 
end.  An  application  on  behalf  of  his  friends  and 
his  son  for  Eliot's  release  was  made  in  October,  1622, 
on  the  ground  that  "the  doctors  were  of  opinion  he 
could  never  recover  of  his  consumption  until  such 
time  as  he  might  breathe  in  purer  air."  The  reply 
of  Chief  Justice  Richardson  was  "that,  although 
Sir  John  were  brought  low  in  body,  yet  was  he  as 
high  and  lofty  in  mind  as  ever ;  for  he  would 
neither  submit  to  the  king  nor  to  the  justice  of  that 
court." 

On  November  27th,  1632,  the  spirit  of  John 
Eliot,  unbroken  by  captivity,  passed  from  the  body 
his  gaolers  had  deprived  of  life.  A  last  appeal  from 
his  son  to  the  king  for  the  removal  of  his  father's 
body  into  Cornwall,  there  to  lie  with  those  of  his 
ancestors  at  Port  Eliot,  received  the  curt  refusal, 
"  Let  Sir  John  Eliot's  body  be  buried  in  the  church 
of  the  parish  where  he  died."  And  so  he  was 
buried  in  the  Tower,  and  no  stone  marks  the  spot 
where  he  lies. 

John  Eliot  was  but  forty-two  when  he  laid  down 
his  life  for  the  principle  of  parliamentary  govern- 
ment. 

Any  satisfaction  that  might  have  been  felt  by 
Charles  and  Laud  at  the  death  of  the  foremost 
antagonist  to  their  policy  of  absolutism  was  fleeting. 
For  if  Eliot  was  dead,  the  cause  he  had  championed 
with  such  conspicuous  sincerity  and  courage  was 
alive,  and  John  Hampden  and  John  Pym  were  at 

18 


258          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

hand  to  carry  on  the  fight  till  Cromwell  and  his 
Ironsides  were  ready  to  end  the  battle. 

Charles  was  determined  that,  until  the  commons 
should  be  more  submissive,  he  would  call  no  parlia- 
ment, but  would  govern  through  his  ministers  alone. 
The  difficulty  was  to  find  money. 

In  1634  London  and  the  seaports  were  persuaded 
to  furnish  supplies  for  ships  on  the  pretext  that 
piracy  must  be  prevented.  A  year  later  and  the 
demand  was  extended  to  the  inland  counties,  and 
John  Hampden,  taking  his  stand  on  the  Petition  of 
Right  which  Charles  had  granted  in  1628,  declined 
to  pay.  Ten  out  of  twelve  of  the  king's  judges  had 
decided  that  ship-money  might  be  enforced  if  the 
kingdom  appeared  to  be  in  danger,  but  against  this 
declared  legality  there  was  the  decree  of  parliament 
forbidding  forced  loans  or  taxes  without  parlia- 
mentary sanction. 

On  this  resistance  of  the  ship-money  Hampden's 
fame  has  been  chiefly  built  up.  The  amount  was 
small — only  a  matter  of  some  twenty  shillings — the 
issue  was  of  a  first  importance.  It  was  clear  to 
Hampden  that  if  the  king  could  raise  money  by 
such  methods,  what  need  would  there  be  in  the 
royal  mind  for  the  calling  of  parliament  at  all  ?  The 
question  was  forced  upon  him  :  Was  parliament  an 
essential  part  of  the  constitution  ?  The  judges  had 
declared  ship-money  was  legal,  other  taxation  and 
forced  loans  could  easily  find  justification  on  the 
judicial  bench,  and  thus  the  crown  obtain  its  revenue, 
and  England  ruled  without  any  let  or  hindrance  from 
its  citizens.  To  admit  the  position  was  to  see  the 
work  of  centuries  undone,  and  the  old  contest  in  the 
land  for  liberties  in  return  for  taxes  abandoned. 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          259 

Hampden's  refusal  to  pay  ship-money  was  a 
declaration  for  parliamentary  government.  No 
more  a  republican  than  Eliot  or  Pym,  Hampden 
could  see  that  either  crown  or  parliament  must  be 
supreme  in  the  affairs  of  the  nation.1  The  constitu- 
tion was  not  to  be  balanced  so  evenly  as  Eliot  had 
believed.  Eliot  himself  had  been  deprived  of  life 
for  maintaining,  not  the  supremacy  but  the  liberty  of 
parliament.  For  John  Hampden  the  evils  of  royal 
supremacy  were  obvious  and  present :  misrule,  the 
restoration  of  a  religion  banished  by  authority  of 
crown  and  parliament,  and  disliked  and  feared  by 
the  majority  of  serious-minded  people  in  the  country, 
and  the  imprisonment  of  all  who  claimed  the  old 
freedom  of  parliament. 

The  case  was  decided  against  him  in  the  law 
courts,  but  five  of  the  twelve  judges  supported 
Hampden's  contention  that  the  resistance  to  pay- 
ment was  valid,  and  the  arguments  for  his  defence 
were  published  far  and  wide.  "The  judgment 
proved  of  more  advantage  and  credit  to  the  gentle- 
man condemned  than  to  the  king's  service."2 

Three  years  later,  and  Charles  was  forced  to 
summon  parliament  to  get  money  for  his  war  in 
Scotland — the  "  Bishop's  War,"  perhaps  the  most 
hopeless  of  all  his  ventures. 

Parliament  met  in  April,  and  its  temper  was  so 
unfavourable  to  the  desires  of  the  king,  for  the 
forcible  conversion  of  the  Scots  to  episcopacy,  that 
it  was  dissolved  in  three  weeks.  John  Pym  was 

1  "  His  (Hampden's)  distinction  lay  in  his  power  of  disentangling-  the 
essential  part  from  the  non-essential.       In  the  previous    constitutional 
struggle  he  had  seen  that  the  one  thing  necessary  was  to  establish  the 
supremacy  of  the  House  of  Commons." — S.  R.  Gardiner. 

2  Clarendon. 


260          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

notable  in  that  "Short  Parliament  "  as  the  spokes- 
man of  the  aggrieved  country  party,  and  the  commons 
decided  that  the  grievances  of  the  nation  must  be 
considered  before  supplies  were  voted.  The  Scotch 
war  was  intolerable  to  Pym  and  Hampden.  They 
had  no  objection  to  episcopacy  as  long  as  bishops 
were  men  of  Protestant  convictions.  It  was  Laud 
the  "Anglo-Catholic,"  Laud  the  preacher  of  the 
divine  right  of  kings,  not  Laud  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  whom  they  detested,  and  they  had  no 
relish  for  the  expenditure  of  English  life  and 
treasure  in  the  forcing  of  Laudian  doctrine  on 
Protestant  Scotland. 

In  the  long  eleven  years  of  silence  from  the  utter- 
ance of  parliament  things  had  been  going  steadily 
from  bad  to  worse  in  England,  Pym  made  out. 
Naturally  conservative  in  mind,  seeing  in  the  con- 
stitution of  king  and  parliament  an  admirable 
instrument  of  government,  and  in  the  Established 
Church  of  England  an  excellent  expression  of  the 
Protestant  religion,  Pym  had  found  that  with 
parliament  suspended  the  Protestantism  of  the 
Established  Church  had  been  steadily  undermined 
by  Laud's  policy,  and  the  revival  of  some  estranged 
Catholic  doctrines  and  practices  had  proceeded 
apace.  Without  parliament  there  was  no  security 
for  national  well-being.  "  Powers  of  parliament  are 
to  the  body  politic  as  rational  faculties  of  the  soul 
to  man,"  he  declares  in  April,  1640. 

Pym  had  entered  the  House  of  Commons  with 
Eliot  in  1614,  and  had  been  imprisoned  in  that  year 
for  his  boldness.  In  1620  he  had  been  one  of  the 
"twelve  ambassadors"  to  James  I.,  for  whom  that 
king  had  ordered  chairs  to  be  set  in  Whitehall. 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          261 

With  Eliot  and  Hampden  he  had  pressed  for 
Buckingham's  impeachment  and  for  the  Petition  of 
Right.  Now  in  1640,  John  Pym,  in  his  fifty-sixth 
year,  was  about  to  become  the  accredited  leader  of 
the  parliamentary  party,  to  be  called  "  King  Pym  " 
by  his  enemies  at  the  court,  and  to  pass  away  when 
the  long  constitutional  struggle  was  being  settled  on 
the  field  of  civil  war.  Unimaginative,  and  averse 
from  new  ideas,  Pym  had  a  quite  clear  perception 
of  the  business  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  of 
the  fitting  relations  of  king  and  parliament.  The 
crown,  the  lords,  the  commons  were  all  recognized 
and  necessary  elements  in  the  constitution,  but  their 
importance  was  not  equal.  The  collective  assembly 
of  parliament  had  prevailed  over  the  crown  more 
than  once  ;  to  Pym,  the  Laudian  "  divine  right " 
was  a  novelty,  and  nonsense  at  that.  Parliament 
could  do  much  of  its  work  with  or  without  royal 
approval,  and  of  the  two  Houses,  if  the  Lords 
were  unwilling  to  work  with  the  lower  House,  the 
Commons  could  "save  the  kingdom  alone." 

In  the  autumn  Charles  was  driven  again  to  appeal 
to  parliament,  and  in  November,  1640,  the  "Long 
Parliament"  met,  only  to  be  dissolved  thirteen 
years  later  by  the  arms  of  Cromwell.  To  the 
eleven  years  of  "personal  government"  by  Charles 
succeed  thirteen  years  of  parliamentary  govern- 
ment, and  then  the  House  of  Commons,  now  too 
enfeebled  to  endure,  itself  goes  down  before  a 
military  dictatorship. 

Pym  anticipated  the  coming  struggle  by  riding 
over  England  on  the  eve  of  the  elections  to  the 
Long  Parliament  and  urging  the  electors  to  return 
men  to  the  House  of  Commons  resolute  and  alive 


262          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

to  the  crisis.  The  response  was  unmistakable. 
Parliament  assembled  to  find  some  remedy  for  the 
distresses  of  the  country  before  voting  any  money 
for  the  purposes  of  the  crown.  Enormous  numbers 
of  petitions  were  presented,  and  the  House  of 
Commons  appointed  its  committees  to  attend  to 
and  report  on  the  complaints.1 

Before  the  year  closed  the  House  of  Commons 
had  struck  at  the  power  of  Laud  and  Wentworth 
(now  the  Earl  of  Strafford),  and  the  two  ministers 
lay  in  prison  impeached  for  high  treason.  Winde- 
bank,  Charles's  secretary  of  state,  and  Finch,  the 
chancellor,  were  already  fled  over  seas. 

It  was  Pym  who  went  to  the  bar  of  the  House  of 
Lords  to  summon  Strafford  to  surrender,  and  it  was 
Pym  who  opened  the  charge  of  impeachment  the 
following  March.  As  in  Eliot's  time,  Hampden  is 
content  to  be  overshadowed  by  his  friend,  though 
his  was  the  greater  influence  in  the  House. 

Clarendon  has  given  us  his  view  of  Hampden  at 
the  opening  of  the  Long  Parliament : 

When  this  parliament  began  the  eyes  of  all  men  were  fixed 
upon  him,  as  their  patriae  pater,  and  the  pilot  that  must  steer 
the  vessel  through  the  tempests  and  rocks  which  threatened 
it.  I  am  persuaded  his  power  and  interest  at  that  time  were 
greater  to  do  good  or  hurt  than  any  man's  in  the  kingdom,  or 
than  any  man  of  his  rank  hath  had  in  any  time  ;  for  his  re- 
putation of  honesty  was  universal,  and  his  affections  seemed 
so  publicly  guided,  that  no  corrupt  or  private  ends  could  bias 
them. 

Baxter,   it  may  be  recalled,   had  written  in  the 

1  "  The  same  men  who,  six  months  before,  were  observed  to  be  of 
very  moderate  tempers,  and  to  wish  that  gentle  remedies  might  be 
applied,  talked  now  in  another  dialect  both  of  kings  and  persons  ;  and 
said  that  they  must  now  be  of  another  temper  than  they  were  in  the  last 
parliament. " — Clarendon. 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym  263 

Saints  Rest  that  one  of  the  pleasures  which  he 
hoped  to  enjoy  in  heaven  was  the  society  of  John 
Hampden.  The  name  of  Hampden  was  blotted 
out  in  the  copies  published  after  the  Restoration. 
"  But,"  wrote  Baxter,  "  I  must  tell  the  reader  that  I 
did  blot  it  out,  not  as  changing  my  opinion  of  the 
person." 

The  work  of  Pym  and  Hampden  is  conspicuous 
at  the  beginning  of  the  Long  Parliament.  The 
Star  Chamber  and  High  Commission  Courts  are 
abolished.  Ship-money  and  all  enforced  taxation 
unauthorised  by  parliament  are  declared  illegal. 
Oliver  Cromwell's  motion  for  annual  parliaments  is 
amended  into  an  act  for  triennial  parliaments  to  be 
called  with  or  without  royal  summons.  Strafford — 
the  only  strong  minister  Charles  had — perished  on 
Tower  Hill  in  May,  both  Pym  and  Hampden  sup- 
porting impeachment  instead  of  attainder,  and 
voting  for  the  fallen  minister  to  be  allowed  the  use 
of  counsel  at  his  trial.  That  Strafford  was  a 
criminal  and  a  traitor  ready  to  use  his  Irish  army 
for  the  suppression  of  the  English  parliament  Pym 
had  no  doubt. 

Still  Charles  would  not  admit  the  position  lost, 
and  still  struggled  to  govern,  not  through  parlia- 
ment, but  by  personal  rule.  The  death  of  Strafford, 
though  approved  by  all  supporters  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  rallied  the  king's  friends.  The  House  of 
Lords  was  no  longer  quite  at  one  with  the  Commons 
in  the  contest.  In  the  House  of  Commons  a 
royalist  party  emerges  to  oppose  Pym,  and  the 
beginning  of  party  government  is  seen.  Overtures 
are  made  by  Pym  to  the  queen— to  be  disregarded, 
of  course ;  though  the  tide  is  setting  towards 


264          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

re volution,  yet  Pym  and  Hampden  are  far  from 
revolutionaries.  They  are  willing  to  end  the  political 
power  of  the  bishops  by  turning  them  out  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  but  have  only  moderate  sympathy 
with  the  root-and-branch  Puritans  who  would  abolish 
episcopacy. 

In  the  Grand  Remonstrance  which  Pym  laid 
before  the  House  of  Commons  in  November,  1641, 
the  case  for  the  Parliament  was  stated  with  frank- 
ness, but  the  demands  were  not  revolutionary.  The 
main  points  were  securities  for  the  administration  of 
justice,  and  insistence  on  the  responsibility  of  the 
king's  ministers  to  parliament.  The  royalists  fought 
the  Remonstrance  vigorously,  and  in  the  end  it  was 
only  carried  by  a  majority  of  eleven,  159  to  148. 
At  the  end  of  the  debate  the  excitement  was  intense  : 
"some  waved  their  hats  over  their  heads,  and  others 
took  their  swords  in  their  scabbards  out  of  their 
belts,  and  held  them  by  the  pummels  in  their  hands, 
setting  the  lower  part  on  the  ground."  Violence 
seemed  inevitable,  "had  not  the  sagacity  and  great 
calmness  of  Mr.  Hampden,  by  a  short  speech, 
prevented  it." 

On  the  ist  of  December  the  Remonstrance,  with 
a  petition  for  the  removal  of  grievances,  especially 
in  matters  of  religion,  was  presented  to  the  king  at 
Hampton  Court.  "  Charles  had  now  a  last  chance 
of  regaining  the  affection  of  his  people.  If  he  could 
have  resolved  to  give  his  confidence  to  the  leaders 
of  the  moderate  party  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  to  regulate  his  proceedings  by  their  advice,  he 
might  have  been,  not,  indeed,  as  he  had  been,  a 
despot,  but  the  powerful  and  respected  king  of  a  free 
people.  The  nation  might  have  enjoyed  liberty 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          265 

and  repose  under  a  government  with  Falkland 
at  its  head,  checked  by  a  constitutional  opposition 
under  the  conduct  of  Hampden.  It  was  not  neces- 
sary that,  in  order  to  accomplish  this  happy  end, 
the  king  should  sacrifice  any  part  of  his  lawful 
prerogative,  or  submit  to  any  conditions  inconsistent 
with  his  dignity."  So  Macaulay  wrote.  But  the 
days  of  "governments"  and  "constitutional  opposi- 
tions "  were  far  off  in  1641,  and  only  the  germ  of 
party  government  is  seen  in  the  division  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  To  "  submit  to  any  condi- 
tions "  from  parliament  was  inconsistent  with  the 
king's  notions  of  royal  dignity,  fostered  by  Laud  to 
reject  all  criticisms  as  denials  of  the  absolutism  of 
the  crown. 

Charles  promised  an  answer  to  the  deputation 
which  waited  on  him,  and  the  answer  was  seen  on 
January  3,  1642,  when  the  king's  attorney  appeared 
at  the  bar  of  the  Lords,  impeached  Pym,  Hampden, 
Holies,  Strode,  and  Hazlerig  of  high  treason,  in 
having  corresponded  with  the  Scots  for  the  invasion 
of  England,  and  demanded  the  surrender  of  the 
five  members.  "  All  constitutional  law  was  set 
aside  by  a  charge  which  proceeded  personally  from 
the  king,  which  deprived  the  accused  of  their  legal 
right  to  a  trial  by  their  peers,  and  summoned  them 
before  a  tribunal  which  had  no  pretence  to  a  juris- 
diction over  them." 

The  House  of  Commons  simply  declined  to 
surrender  their  members,  but  promised  to  take  the 
matter  into  consideration. 

Then  Charles,  with  some  three  hundred  cavaliers, 
went  to  Westminster,  and  entered  the  House  of 
Commons  to  demand  the  accused.  But  the  five 


2  66          Leaders  of  the  People        [1625- 

members,  warned  of  his  coming,  were  out  of  the 
way  and  safe  within  the  city  of  London.  "  It  was 
believed  that  if  the  king  had  found  them  there,  and 
called  in  his  guards  to  have  seized  them,  the  members 
of  the  House  would  have  endeavoured  the  defence 
of  them,  which  might  have  proved  a  very  unhappy 
and  sad  business."  As  it  was,  the  king  could  only 
retire  discomfited,  with  some  words  about  respecting 
the  laws  of  the  realm  and  the  privileges  of  parlia- 
ment, and  "  in  a  more  discontented  and  angry  passion 
than  he  came  in." 

The  invasion  of  the  Commons  was  the  worst  move 
Charles  could  have  made,  for  parliament  was  in  no 
temper  favourable  to  royal  encroachments,  and  it 
had  a  large  population  at  hand  ready  to  give  sub- 
stantial support.  The  city  of  London  at  once 
declared  for  the  House  of  Commons,  ignored  the 
king's  writs  for  the  arrest  of  the  five  members,  and 
answered  the  royal  proclamation  declaring  them 
"traitors  "  by  calling  out  the  trained  bands  for  the 
escort  of  the  members  back  to  Westminster,  and  for 
the  protection  of  the  House  of  Commons. 

Falkland  and  the  royalist  members  turned  for  the 
moment  from  Charles  at  his  unexpected  attack  on 
the  House,  the  cavaliers  of  Whitehall,  menaced  by 
the  trained  bands  from  Southwark  and  the  city, 
fled,  and  Charles,  standing  alone,  left  London. 

War  was  now  imminent.  Pym  and  Hampden  at 
once  prepared  for  the  struggle. 

Pym  secured  the  arsenals  of  Portsmouth  and  Hull 
for  the  parliament,  but  his  efforts  to  obtain  the  con- 
trol of  the  militia  in  the  counties  were  frustrated  for 
a  time  by  the  king's  natural  refusal  to  consent  to 
the  Militia  Bill,  which  would  have  placed  troops 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          267 

under  the  orders  of  country  gentlemen  of  the 
parliamentary  party. 

Both  king  and  parliament  had  to  break  through 
all  constitutional  precedent.  The  king  levied  troops 
by  a  royal  commission,  and  Pym  got  an  ordinance 
of  both  Houses  of  Parliament  passed  appointing 
the  lords-lieutenant  to  command  the  militia,  and 
thereby  published  the  supremacy  of  parliament  over 
the  crown.  In  April  the  king  appeared  at  Hull  to 
obtain  arms,  and  was  refused  admission  to  the  town 
by  Sir  John  Hotham,  the  governor.  Parliament 
expressed  its  approval  of  Hotham's  act,  the  royalists 
gathered  round  Charles  at  York,  and  the  final  pro- 
posals of  parliament  for  ending  absolute  monarchy 
were  rejected  by  the  king  in  June  with  the  words, 
"  If  I  granted  your  demands  I  should  be  no  more 
than  the  mere  phantom  of  a  king."1 

With  this  refusal  all  negotiations  were  broken  off. 
Essex  was  appointed  commander  of  the  parlia- 
mentary army,  and  in  August  Charles  raised  the 
royal  standard  at  Nottingham,  and  war  was  begun. 

Hampden  threw  himself  vigorously  into  the  cam- 
paign. From  his  native  county  of  Buckingham, 
the  county  which  made  him  its  representative  in 
parliament  in  1640,  he  raised  a  regiment  of  infantry. 

1  The  Nineteen  Propositions  fairly  express  the  views  of  Pym  and 
Hampden  at  this  time  on  the  supremacy  of  the  Commons.  The  main 
proposals  were  the  authority  of  parliament :  in  the  sole  choice  of  the 
ministers  of  the  crown,  in  the  regulation  of  state  policy,  in  the  manage- 
ment of  the  militia,  in  the  education  of  the  royal  children,  in  the 
remodelling'  of  the  discipline  of  the  Church  of  England ;  and  the 
guardianship  by  parliament  of  all  forts  and  castles.  It  was  of  first 
importance  in  Pym's  mind  that  parliament  should  have  the  control  in 
military  matters.  Without  the  power  of  the  sword  the  House  of 
Commons  could  not  ensure  the  personal  safety  of  its  members  or  the 
privileges  of  free  debate  against  the  enmity  of  the  king.  To  command 
the  army  was  to  govern  the  country. 


268          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

"  His  neighbours  eagerly  enlisted  under  his  com- 
mand. His  men  were  known  by  their  green 
uniform,  and  by  their  standard,  which  bore  on  one 
side  the  watchword  of  the  parliament,  '  God  with 
us,'  and  on  the  other  the  device  of  Hampden, 
1  Vestigia  nulla  retrorsum!  '  In  the  first  stages  of 
the  war,  before  any  decisive  blow  had  been  struck, 
Hampden  was  busy  passing  and  repassing  between 
the  army  and  the  parliament.  Clarendon  praises 
his  courage  and  ability  on  the  field. 

A  skirmish  at  Chalgrove,  on  June  i8th,  1643, 
between  bodies  of  horse  commanded  by  Rupert 
and  by  Hampden,  ended  in  victory  for  the  royalists. 
Hampden  was  seen  riding  off  the  field,  "  before  the 
action  was  done,  which  he  never  used  to  do,  and 
with  his  head  hanging  down,  and  resting  his  hands 
upon  the  neck  of  his  horse."  He  was  mortally 
wounded,  for  two  carbine  balls  were  lodged  in  his 
shoulder,  and  reached  Thame  only  to  die  six  days 
later. 

The  death  of  Hampden — at  the  age  of  49 — 
came  at  a  dark  hour  in  the  early  fortunes  of  the 
parliamentary  army,  and  deepened  the  gloom. 
"  The  loss  of  Colonel  Hampden  goeth  near  the 
heart  of  every  man  that  loves  the  good  of  his  king 
and  country,  and  makes  some  conceive  little  content 
to  be  at  the  army  now  that  he  is  gone."  But  Pym 
remained,  and  Cromwell  and  Vane,  and  many 
another  resolute  House  of  Commons  man. 

Pym's  health  was  already  broken  when  Hampden 
fell,  but  he  lived  to  accomplish  the  alliance  of  the 
English  Puritans  and  the  Scotch  army,  and,  as  the 
price  of  this  alliance,  the  abolition  of  episcopacy 
and  the  adoption  of  Presbyterianism  in  the  Church 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          269 

of  England.  The  Solemn  League  and  Covenant 
was  accepted  by  parliament,  and  imposed  on  the 
nation  in  September.  Henceforth  the  parliamentary 
army  was  pledged  to  extirpate  "  Popery,  prelacy, 
superstition,  schism  and  profaneness  "  ;  to  bring  "  the 
Churches  of  God  in  the  three  kingdoms  to  the 
nearest  conjunction  and  uniformity  in  religion  "  ;  to 
"preserve  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  parlia- 
ment and  the  liberties  of  the  kingdom  ;  and  to 
unite  the  two  kingdoms  in  a  firm  peace  and  union  to 
all  posterity." 

The  taking  of  the  covenant — a  political  necessity 
— was  John  Pym's  last  work.  He  was  ten  years 
older  than  Hampden,  and  his  character  was  ruggeder 
and  sterner  and  without  the  charm  of  the  younger 
man.  But  Pym's  was  the  greater  genius  in  politics, 
and  his  scheme  of  constitutional  government  was  to 
be  fulfilled  in  England  at  a  later  season. 

John  Pym  died  on  December  8th,  1643,  an<^  his 
body  was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey — only  to  be 
turned  out  at  the  Restoration  and  removed  to  St. 
Margaret's  churchyard. 

With  Pym  and  Hampden  gone,  henceforth  the 
conduct  of  parliament  was  in  other  hands,  and  the 
day  of  moderate  statesmanship  had  passed. 

The  war  undertaken  to  preserve  the  liberties  and 
establish  the  supremacy  of  the  House  of  Commons 
was  to  bring  in  its  train  not  only  the  abolition  of 
monarchy  and  the  House  of  Lords,  but  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  House  of  Commons  itself. 

Important  to  the  nation  as  the  issues  at  stake 
were,  most  people  in  England  took  hardly  any 
more  part  or  interest  in  the  great  civil  war  than  they 
had  done  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  "  A  very  large 


270          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

number  of  persons  regarded  the  struggle  with 
indifference.  .  .In  one  case,  the  inhabitants 

of  an  entire  county  pledged  themselves  to  remain 
neutral.  Many  quietly  changed  with  the  times 
(as  people  changed  with  the  varying  fortunes  of 
York  and  Lancaster).  That  this  sentiment  of 
neutrality  was  common  to  the  greater  mass  of  the 
working  classes  is  obvious  from  the  simultaneous 
appearance  of  the  club  men  in  different  parts  of  the 
country,  with  their  motto,  '  If  you  take  our  cattle,  we 
will  give  you  battle.'"1 

How  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  Supremacy  of  King, 
or  supremacy  of  Commons, — seed  time  and  harvest 
remain,  and  the  labourer  and  the  artizan  must  needs 
do  their  day's  work. 

Not  till  the  deposing  of  the  Stuarts — forty-five 
years  after  John  Hampden's  death — is  the  supremacy 
of  parliament  over  the  crown  arrived  at  by  general 
consent,  to  become  a  recognized  and  settled  thing 
in  British  politics.  By  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  the  House  of  Commons  is  unmistakably  the 
ruling  power  in  the  constitution,  and  the  labours  of 
Eliot,  Hampden  and  Pym  are  vindicated. 

In  our  own  day  changes  in  the  balance  of  con- 
stitutional power  may  be  noted.  The  supremacy  of 
the  House  of  Commons  is  quietly  disappearing 
before  the  growing  popularity  of  the  crown,  the  re- 
awakened activity  of  the  House  of  Lords,  and  the 
steady  gathering  of  the  reins  of  power  into  the  hands 
of  the  Cabinet  and  Executive.  As  the  crown  in 
the  last  twenty  years  has  increased  in  popular 
esteem,  so  the  influence  and  importance  of  the 

r  1  See  G.  P.  Goodi,  History  of  Democratic  Ideas  in  the  Seventeenth 
Century. 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          271 

Commons  has  waned  in  the  country ;  and  this 
waning  influence  of  the  Lower  House  has  been 
further  diminished  by  the  frequent  rejection  and 
revision  of  its  measures  by  the  House  of 
Lords. 

The  power  of  the  Executive  has  also  been 
obtained  at  the  expense  of  the  power  of  the 
Commons.  The  Cabinet,  rather  than  the  House  of 
Commons,  holds  the  supremacy  to-day,  and  the 
direction  of  foreign  policy,  and  the  making  of  inter- 
national treaties  are  no  more  within  the  authority  of 
the  House  of  Commons  than  are  the  administration 
of  Egypt  and  India.  Pym  and  Hampden  fought 
and  gave  their  lives  for  the  right  of  the  House  of 
Commons  to  control  the  ministers  of  the  crown  and 
to  order  the  policy  of  these  ministers.  By  its  own 
consent,  and  not  from  pressure  from  without,  the 
House  of  Commons  has  silently  surrendered  this 
right,  and  has  agreed  that  the  policy  of  its  Foreign 
Minister  for  the  time  being — whether  he  be  Liberal 
or  Conservative — must  not  be  subject  to  reproof, 
still  less  to  correction.  In  home  affairs  administrative 
order  steadily  supersedes  statute  law. 

In  theory  ministers  are  still  subject  to  the  House 
of  Commons.  In  actual  practice  they  can  rely  on 
not  being  interfered  with  as  long  as  their  party  has  a 
majority  in  the  House.  When  the  price  of  effective 
interference  with  the  conduct  of  affairs  is  a  defeat 
of  the  Cabinet  and  a  consequent  dissolution,  the 
payment  is  more  than  members  of  parliament  are 
prepared  to  make. 

Given  the  sense  of  security  of  social  order  and  of 
the  administration  of  justice,  the  nation,  generally, 
no  more  heeds  the  passing  of  the  supremacy  from  the 


272          Leaders  of  the  People         [1625- 

House  of  Commons,  than  it  heeded  the  winning  of 
that  supremacy. 

The  Laudian  doctrine  in  the  Church  of  England, 
revived  at  the  Restoration,  disappeared  with  the 
passing  of  the  non -jurors  at  the  close  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  But  its  Anglo-Catholic  teaching 
was  renewed  by  the  Oxford  Movement,  early  in 
Queen  Victoria's  reign,  and  has  largely  changed  the 
whole  appearance  of  the  Church  of  England.  The 
modern  high  Anglican,  claiming,  as  Laud  claimed, 
the  right  to  interpret  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
as  a  Catholic  document,  but  no  longer  the  advocate 
of  any  theory  of  divine  right  of  kings,  or  the 
champion  of  any  particular  political  creed,  has 
travelled  indeed  far  beyond  Laud's  very  limited 
success  in  winning  support  for  Catholic  doctrine  and 
ritual  in  the  Church  of  England.  Laud  was  beaten 
by  the  opposition  of  parliament  ;  his  present  day 
successors  in  the  Church  of  England  have  prospered 
in  spite  of  that  opposition,  and  have  triumphed  over 
acts  of  parliaments,  adverse  judicial  sentences, 
privations  and  imprisonments.  But  with  Laud  the 
movement  was  directed  by  bishops  and  approved 
by  the  king,  the  modern  Laudian  movement  was 
banned  by  bishops  and  disfavoured  by  all  in  high 
authority. 

To-day  nearly  every  Catholic  doctrine,  save  papal 
supremacy,  has  its  expounders  and  defenders  in  the 
Church  of  England,  and  Catholic  rites  and  ceremonies 
are  freely  practised. 

Laud,  dying  on  the  scaffold  in  1645  at  the  hands 
of  parliament,  is  amply  avenged  in  the  twentieth 
century  by  the  victorious  high-churchman.  The 
Laudian  clergy  of  the  Established  Church  can  now 


-1643]          Eliot,  Hampden,  Pym          273 

maintain  their  Anglo- Catholic  faith  and  practice, 
without  any  fear  of  parliamentary  interference.  For 
generally  they  enjoy  a  popularity  and  respect  that 
the  House  of  Commons  does  not  willingly  venture 
to  assail. 


John  Lilburne  and  the 
Levellers 

1647-1653 


AUTHORITIES  :  Lilburne's  Pamphlets  ;  Calendar  of 
State  Papers  ;  Charles  /.  and  the  Commonwealth  ;  State 
Trials  ;  House  of  Commons'  Journals ;  VVhitelocke — 
Memorials  of  English  Affairs  ;  Clarendon — History  of 
the  Rebellion  ;  W.  Godwin — History  of  the  Common- 
wealth ;  S.  R.  Gardiner — History  of  the  Great  Civil 
War ;  History  of  the  Commonwealth  and  Protectorate  ; 
G.  P.  Gooch — History  of  Democratic  Ideas  in  the  Seven- 
teenth Century. 


JOHN  LILBURNE  AND 
THE  LEVELLERS 

1647-1653. 

FROM  his  coming  of  age  in  1637  till  the  near 
approach  of  death,  when  he  turned,  a  dying 
man,  to  the  peaceful  tenets  of  the  Quakers, 
the  life  of  John   Lilburne   is   a  record  of 
twenty  years  of  strife  and   battle  with   the   rulers 
of  the  land. 

He  came  of  pugnacious  stock,  for  John  Lilburne's 
father,  a  well-to-do  Durham  squire,  was  the  last 
man  to  demand  the  settlement  of  a  lawsuit  by  the 
ordeal  of  battle,  and  came  into  court  armed  accord- 
ingly— only  to  be  disappointed  by  an  order  from  the 
crown,  forbidding  the  proposed  return  to  such 
ancient  and  obsolete  methods  of  deciding  the 
differences  of  neighbours. 

Apprenticed  to  a  wholesale  cloth-merchant  in 
London,  John  Lilburne  soon  became  acquainted 
with  Bastwick  and  Prynne,  then  busy  over  anti- 
episcopal  pamphlets,  and,  keeping  such  company, 
naturally  fell  into  the  clutches  of  the  Star  Chamber. 
The  charge  against  him  was  that  he  had  helped  to 
print  and  circulate  unlicensed  books,  in  particular, 
Prynne's  News  from  Ipswich  ;  and  though  Lilburne 
declared  the  charge  to  be  false,  on  his  refusal  to 
take  the  usual  oath  to  answer  truly  all  questions  put 
to  him,  the  Star  Chamber  adjudged  him  guilty,  and 
passed  sentence — Lilburne  was  to  be  whipped  from 

277 


278          Leaders  of  the  People        [1647- 

the  Fleet  to  Westminster,  to  stand  in  the  pillory, 
and  to  be  kept  in  prison. 

The  sentence  was  carried  out  on  February  i3th, 
1638,  but  Lilburne  was  not  cowed,  for  he  scattered 
some  of  Bastwick's  offending  pamphlets  on  the 
road,  and  was  gagged  in  the  pillory  to  reduce  him 
to  silence.  In  prison  things  went  hardly  with 
Lilburne,  for  the  authorities  had  him  placed  in  irons 
and  kept  in  solitary  confinement,  and  only  the 
compassion  of  fellow  prisoners  saved  him  from  actual 
starvation  in  the  two  years  and  nine  months  of  his 
imprisonment. 

It  was  a  rough  beginning,  and  John  Lilburne 
was  henceforth  an  agitator  and  a  rebel. 

At  the  end  of  1640  one  of  the  first  things  done 
by  the  Long  Parliament  was  to  order  Lilburne's 
release,  and  in  the  following  May  the  sentence  was 
pronounced  "illegal  and  against  the  liberties  of  the 
subject."  But  illegal  or  not,  the  punishment  had 
been  inflicted,  and  with  unbroken  spirit,  passionately 
resenting  the  tyranny  that  could  so  wrong  men, 
Lilburne  flew  quickly  to  the  attack  on  the  authors  of 
the  injustice. 

At  Edgehill  Lilburne  held  a  captain's  commission, 
and  at  Brentford  he  was  taken  prisoner  by  the 
royalists.  Only  the  threat  of  swift  reprisals  by  the 
parliamentary  army  saved  him  from  being  shot  as 
"  a  traitor,"  and  the  following  year  he  was  again  at 
liberty  on  an  exchange  of  prisoners.  Again,  after 
fighting  at  Marston  Moor,  he  fell  into  the  hands  of 
the  royalists,  and,  shot  through  the  arm,  was  kept  in 
prison  at  Oxford  for  six  months. 

Brave  soldier  as  Lilburne  was,  he  left  the  army 
in  1645  (with  the  rank  of  Lieutenant-Colonel  and 


-1653]  J0hn  Lilburne  279 

with  ,£880  arrears  of  pay  owing  to  him)  rather  than 
take  the  covenant  and  subscribe  to  the  requirements 
of  Cromwell's  "  new  model." 

And  now  monarchy  having  fallen  from  its  high 
estate,  Lilburne  at  once  saw  elements  of  tyranny  in 
the  Parliamentary  government,  and  did  not  hesitate 
to  say  so.  Courageous  and  intrepid,  with  consider- 
able legal  knowledge,  a  passion  for  liberty,  and  clear 
views  on  democracy,  John  Lilburne  might  have 
given  invaluable  service  to  the  commonwealth.  He 
had  shown  skill  and  daring  in  the  war,  his  character 
for  fearless  endurance  had  been  proved,  his  ability  as 
a  pamphleteer  was  considerable,  and  his  capacity 
for  work  enormous ;  the  government  had  either  to 
treat  Lilburne  as  a  friend  or  foe — he  was  not  to 
be  ignored.  The  government,  unwisely,  decided 
Lilburne  was  an  enemy,  and  for  the  next  ten  years 
he  fought  the  rule  of  parliament  and  the  army,  his 
popularity  increasing  with  every  new  pamphlet  he 
produced.  The  price  the  commonwealth  govern- 
ment paid  for  its  opposition  to  Lilburne  was  to 
be  seen  on  the  death  of  Cromwell.1 

From  1645  to  1649  Lilburne's  vigorous  criticisms 
of  the  men  in  power  provoked  retaliation,  and 
brought  him  to  Newgate.  But  in  prison  or  out  of 
prison  Lilburne  went  on  hammering  away  to  establish 
a  democratic  constitution.  The  time  was  to  come 
when  Cromwell  would  find  the  Long  Parliament 
had  outlived  its  usefulness  and  would  end  it  by  main 
force.  Lilburne  was  anxious  in  1647  for  a  radical 
reform  of  parliament  and  a  general  manhood 

1  "  By  its  injudicious  treatment  of  the  most  popular  man  in  England, 
parliament  was  arraying  against  itself  a  force  which  only  awaited  an 
opportunity  to  sweep  it  away." — G.  P.  Gooch,  History  of  Democratic 
Ideas  in  the  Seventeenth  Century, 


280          Leaders  of  the  People         [1647- 

suffrage.  His  proposals  were  popular  in  the  army, 
and  had  Cromwell  supported  him  the  whole  future 
of  English  politics  would  have  been  changed. 

When  the  Presbyterian  majority  in  parliament 
proposed  the  disbandment  of  the  army  in  1647,  the 
regiments  chose  their  agitators,  and,  refusing  to 
disband,  drew  up  the  "Agreement  of  the  People" 
and  the  "  Case  for  the  Army."  These  documents 
give  the  political  standpoint  of  the  Levellers  and  the 
particular  grievances  to  be  remedied. 

The  distribution  of  parliamentary  seats  according 
to  the  number  of  inhabitants  was  the  chief  proposal 
in  the  "Agreement  of  the  People,"  and  the  principles 
maintained  are  that  "  no  man  is  bound  to  a  govern- 
ment under  which  he  has  not  put  himself,"  and  that 
"all  inhabitants  who  have  not  lost  their  birthright 
should  have  an  equal  voice  in  elections." 

The  particular  demands  in  the  "  Case  for  the 
Army  "  were  the  abolition  of  monopolies,  freedom 
of  trade  and  religion,  restoration  of  enclosed  com- 
mon lands,  and  abolition  of  sinecures. 

While  Cromwell  and  Ireton  were  both  bitterly 
against  manhood  suffrage,  the  council  of  officers  to 
whom  the  Levellers  appealed  agreed  to  support  it, 
without  approving  the  rest  of  the  programme. 

Cromwell,  relying  on  the  army  to  prevent  a 
royalist  reaction — for  Charles  was  plotting  from 
Carisbrooke  for  aid  from  Scotland,  and  the  royalists 
in  the  House  of  Commons  were  anxious  to  effect  a 
reconciliation — would  give  neither  time  nor  patience 
to  the  demands  of  Lilburne  and  the  Levellers. 

In  vain  the  Levellers  exclaimed,  in  1648,  "  We 
were  ruled  before  by  King,  Lords,  and  Commons, 
now  by  a  General,  Court  Martial,  and  Commons  : 


-1653]  J°hn  Lilburne  281 

and,  we  pray  you,  what  is  the  difference  ?  "  Crom- 
well, at  all  costs,  was  determined  to  preserve  the 
discipline  of  the  army,  and  to  suppress  mutiny  with 
an  iron  hand.  For  him  the  army  which  had  beaten 
the  cavaliers  was  the  one  safeguard  against  the 
return  of  the  old  order  in  Church  and  State.  Lilburne 
and  the  Levellers,  with  the  "  Fifth  Monarchy  "  men, 
had  been  the  strength,  the  very  life  of  the  army  that 
had  conquered  at  Marston  Moor  and  Naseby.  The 
petition  of  the  Fifth  Monarchy  men  for  the  reign  of 
Christ  and  His  saints  (which,  according  to  prophecy, 
was  to  supersede  the  four  monarchies  of  the  ancient 
world)  had  no  terrors  for  Cromwell  ;  in  other  words, 
they  demanded  government  exclusively  by  the  godly, 
Independents  and  Presbyterians  combining  to  elect 
all  representatives,  "  and  to  determine  all  things 
by  the  Word."  "  Such  a  proposal  might  attract 
fanatics ;  it  could  not  attract  the  multitude.  The 
Levellers  who  stood  up  for  an  exaggeration  of  the 
doctrine  of  parliamentary  supremacy  were  likely  to 
be  far  more  numerous."1  To  Cromwell  the  imme- 
diate thing  was  the  royalist  danger  ;  it  was  no  season 
for  embarking  on  democratic  experiments  with  which 
he  had  no  sympathy.  The  breach  between  Crom- 
well and  the  Levellers  widened,  and  as  Cromwell 
became  more  and  more  impatient  of  their  agitation, 
distrust  and  suspicion  of  Cromwell  and  of  the  newly- 

1  "  Advocating  direct  government  by  a  democratic  Parliament  and 
the  fullest  development  of  individual  liberty,  the  Levellers  looked  with 
suspicion  on  the  Council  of  State  as  a  body  which  might  possibly  be 
converted  into  an  executive  authority  independent  of  parliament,  and 
thoroughly  distrusted  Cromwell  as  aiming  at  military  despotism.  Well- 
intentioned  and  patriotic  as  they  were,  they  were  absolutely  destitute 
of  political  tact,  and  had  no  sense  of  the  real  difficulties  of  the  situation, 
and,  above  all,  of  the  impossibility  of  rousing  the  popular  sympathy  on 
behalf  of  abstract  reasonings." — S.  R.  Gardiner,  History  of  the  Com- 
mon-wealth and  Protectorate. 


282          Leaders  of  the  People         [1647- 

appointed  Council  of  State  ripened,  in  1649,  into 
revolt.1  It  is  the  perennial  misunderstanding  between 
the  statesman  and  the  agitator.  The  one  weighted 
by  responsibility  can  rarely  travel  at  the  pace  of  the 
other,  untrammelled  by  office,  and  as  the  distance 
between  the  two  lengthens,  it  seems  they  are  not 
even  pursuing  the  same  course — as,  indeed,  very 
often  they  are  not. 

Lilburne  had  none  of  Cromwell's  anxieties  as  to 
a  possible  royalist  reaction ;  for  him  the  danger 
could  not  come  from  the  dethroned  king  and  his 
defeated  cavaliers,  but  from  a  parliamentary  oligarchy 
or  a  military  dictatorship.  But  he  over-estimated 
the  strength  of  the  Leveller  movement  in  the  army. 
With  the  presentation  of  the  "  Agreement  of  the 
People  "  the  bulk  of  the  discontent  in  the  army 
diminished,  and  while  the  Levellers  who  remained 
became  in  several  regiments  openly  mutinous,  the 
movement  generally  died  down,  so  that  when  the 
revolt  came,  it  was  suppressed  without  difficulty.2 

Lilburne  was  out  of  prison  at  the  beginning  of 
1649.  He  took  no  part  in  the  trial  of  Charles  I., 
and  let  it  be  known  that  he  doubted  the  wisdom  of 
abolishing  monarchy  before  a  new  constitution  had 
been  drawn  up. 

As  neither  the  remnant  of  the  Long  Parliament 

1  S.  R.  Gardiner. 

3  The  movement  "had  sprung-  into  existence  in  response  to  a  widely 
spread  apprehension  that  the  victory  of  the  people  might  be  rendered 
fruitless.  Its  call  had  found  an  echo  in  the  ranks  of  the  army,  and  by 
its  admirable  organization  it  had  insisted  that  the  leaders  should  hear 
what  it  had  to  say.  It  had  powerfully  influenced  their  conduct  and  had 
introduced  a  radical  element  into  their  programme.  When  this  had 
been  done,  the  soldiers  felt  that  its  raison  detre  as  a  separate  party  had 
come  to  an  end.  The  battle  had  been  fought,  and  the  victory,  at  least 
for  the  time,  had  fallen  to  Ireton." — G.  P.  Gooch,  History  of  Democratic 
Ideas  in  the  Seventeenth  Century. 


-1653]  J°hn  Lilburne  283 

nor  Cromwell  and  Fairfax  were  doing  anything  to 
set  up  this  new  constitution,  Lilburne  proceeded  to 
lay  a  remonstrance  before  parliament,  and  to  follow 
this  up  by  his  two  pamphlets  on  "  England's  New 
Chains."  He  now  urged  that  "  committees  of  short 
continuance  "  should  supersede  the  Council  of  State, 
that  the  Self-denying  Ordinance  should  be  put  in 
force,  "seeing  how  dangerous  it  was  for  one  and  the 
same  persons  to  be  continued  long  in  the  highest 
commands  of  a  military  power,"1  that  a  new  parlia- 
ment should  be  elected,  and  the  "  Agreement  of  the 
People  "  proceeded  with  heartily.  At  the  same  time 
he  called  for  army  reform  by  a  reconstruction  of  the 
General  Council  and  the  election  of  agitators. 

The  expulsion  of  five  troopers  from  the  army  for 
directly  petitioning  parliament  provoked  another 
pamphlet — "  The  Hunting  of  the  Foxes  from  New- 
market to  Whitehall  by  five  small  beagles  late  of 
the  army."  The  argument  here  was  that  Cromwell, 
Ireton,  and  Harrison  ruled  the  council  of  officers, 
and  that  the  council  of  officers  ruled  parliament  and 
the  nation.  "The  old  king's  person  and  the  old 
lords  are  but  removed,  and  a  new  king  and  new 
lords  with  the  commons  are  in  one  House,  and  so 
we  are  under  a  more  absolute  arbitrary  monarchy 
than  before." 

There  was  only  one  answer  to  be  made  to 
Lilburne's  pen,  and  that  was  to  arrest  the  man  who 
held  it,  for  the  commonwealth  had  no  one  on  its 
side  who  could  reply  to  him.  At  the  end  of  March 
Lilburne  and  three  of  his  supporters,  Walwyn, 

1  "In  other  words,  not  only  Cromwell  and  Ireton,  but  also  Fairfax, 
who  had  recently  been  elected  a  member  of  the  House,  were  to  be  sum- 
marily cashiered." — S.  R.  Gardiner,  History  of  the  Common-wealth. 


284          Leaders  of  the  People         [1647- 

Prince,  and  Richard  Overton  were  arrested  as 
traitors,  "  England's  New  Chains"  having  been  voted 
by  parliament  seditious  and  destructive  of  the 
government,  and  were  committed  to  the  Tower  to 
await  trial. 

At  once  a  petition  was  got  up  and  signed  by 
80,000  persons  for  Lilburne's  release,  and  a  fort- 
night later — April  i8th — another  petition  was  taken 
to  the  bar  of  the  House  of  Commons  to  the  same 
effect.  Parliament  promised  that  the  prisoners 
should  have  a  legal  trial,  but  declared  the  course  of 
justice  must  not  be  interfered  with.  A  large  deputa- 
tion of  women  also  appeared  at  Westminster  on 
April  23rd  with  a  similar  petition  ;  but  these  were 
forbidden  to  enter  the  House,  and,  admonished  by 
members  to  "go  home  and  wash  their  dishes," 
answered  they  would  soon  have  no  dishes  to  wash.1 

Lilburne  was  not  brought  to  trial  till  October,  and 
in  the  six  months'  interval,  though  the  output  of 
democratic  pamphlets  continued  from  the  Tower, 
the  Leveller  movement  in  the  army  ended  in  open 
mutiny  and  defeat. 

Carlyle  tells  the  story  accurately  enough  of  the 
mutiny  in  Whalley's  regiment  in  Bishopsgate, 
London,  on  April  25th  : 

They  want  this  and  that  ;  they  seize  their  colours  from  the 
cornet,  who  is  lodged  at  the  "  Bull "  there  ;  the  general 
(Fairfax)  and  lieutenant-general  (Cromwell)  have  to  hasten 
thither,  quell  them,  pack  them  forth  on  their  march,  seizing 
fifteen  of  them  first  to  be  tried  by  court-martial.  Tried  by 
instant  court-martial,  five  of  them  are  found  guilty,  doomed 
to  die,  but  pardoned  ;  and  one  of  them,  Trooper  Lockyer,  is 

1  See  the  pamphlet  "A  Petition  of  Well-affected  Women,"  1649. 
There  is  something  curiously  familiar  in  the  exhortation  to  the  women. 


-1653]  J°hn  Lilburne  285 

doomed  and  not  pardoned.1  Trooper  Lockyer  is  shot  in 
Paul's  Churchyard  on  the  morrow.  A  very  brave  young  man, 
they  say ;  though  but  three-and-twenty.  "  He  has  served 
seven  years  in  these  wars,"  ever  since  the  wars  began. 
"Religious,"  too,  "of  excellent  parts  and  much  beloved"; 
but  with  hot  notions  as  to  human  freedom,  and  the  rate  at 
which  the  milleniums  are  attainable.  Poor  Lockyer !  He 
falls  shot  in  Paul's  Churchyard  on  Friday,  amid  the  tears  of 
men  and  women.  Lockyer's  corpse  is  watched  and  wept 
over,  not  without  prayer,  in  the  eastern  regions  of  the  city, 
till  a  new  week  come  ;  and  on  Monday,  this  is  what  we  see 
advancing  westward  by  way  of  funeral  to  him  : 

About  one  thousand  went  before  the  corpse,  five  or  six  in  a 
file  ;  the  corpse  was  then  brought,  with  six  trumpets  sound- 
ing a  soldier's  knell,  then  the  trooper's  horse  came,  clothed 
all  over  in  mourning,  and  led  by  a  footman.  The  corpse  was 
adorned  with  bundles  of  rosemary,  one  half  stained  in  blood, 
and  the  sword  of  the  deceased  along  with  them.  Some 
thousands  followed  in  ranks  and  files,  all  had  sea-green  and 
black  ribbon  tied  on  their  hats  and  to  their  breasts,  and  the 
women  brought  up  the  rear. 

At  the  new  churchyard  at  Westminster  some  thousands 
more  of  the  better  sort  met  them,  who  thought  not  fit  to 
march  through  the  city.  Many  looked  upon  this  funeral  as 
an  affront  to  parliament  and  the  army  ;  others  called  these 
people  "  Levellers"  ;  but  they  took  no  notice  of  any  of  them.2 

In  May  one  Corporal  William  Thompson  rallied 
a  body  of  Levellers  at  Banbury,  published  a  mani- 
festo called  "  England's  Standard  Advanced,"  and 
inveighed  against  the  tyranny  of  courts-martial. 
Overwhelmed  by  force  of  numbers,  Thompson 

1  "  Unfortunately  his  friends,    in  petitioning-  for  his   release,  rested 
their  case  on  the  ground  that  all  sentences  given  by  a  court-martial 
were  made  illegal  by  the  Petition  of  Right  and  the  law  of  the  land. 
Such  a  doctrine  would  have  dissolved  the  army  into  chaos,  and  when 
Lilburne  and  Overton  wrote  to  Fairfax,  threatening  him  with  the  fate  of 
Joab  and  Strafford,  all  chance  of  pardon  was  at  an  end.      Lockyer 
firmly  believed  himself  to  be  a  martyr  to  the  cause  of  right  and  justice." 
— S.  R.  Gardiner,  History  of  the  Common-wealth. 

2  See  Whitelocke's   Memorials,    "The  Army's   Martyr,"    "A    True 
Narrative,"  and  "  The  Moderate"  (1649). 


286          Leaders  of  the  People         [1647- 

escaped,  and  later  died  fighting  alone  near  Welling- 
borough.  Some  twenty  of  his  followers  joined  the 
mutineers  of  Scrope's  regiment  at  Salisbury.  Num- 
bering some  1,200,  these  Levellers  made  their  way 
by  Marlborough  and  Wantage  to  Burford.  Here 
Cromwell  came  up  with  the  mutineers,  and  sur- 
prised them  at  midnight.  Resistance  was  hopeless, 
and  the  majority  at  once  surrendered.  All  were 
pardoned  except  Cornet  Thompson  (brother  to 
William),  and  two  corporals — Church  and  Perkins — 
who  showed  neither  fear  nor  admitted  any  wrong 
on  their  part.  These  three  men  were  shot  in 
Burford  churchyard  on  May  15th,1  and  with  their 
deaths  the  Leveller  movement  was  at  an  end. 

But  Lilburne  was  unsubdued.  His  new  "  Agree- 
ment of  the  Free  People,"  published  on  May  ist, 
called  for  annual  parliaments  elected  by  manhood 
suffrage — pensioners,  militant  royalists,  and  lawyers 
excluded — and  for  the  free  election  of  unendowed 
church  ministers  in  each  parish.  At  the  same  time 
he  disclaimed  all  connection  with  Winstanley's 
"  Diggers  "  —  political  reform  was  Lilburne's 
demand.2 

Released  on  bail  in  July,  Lilburne  issued  in 
August  an  "Impeachment  for  High  Treason  against 
Oliver  Cromwell  and  his  son-in-law,  James  Ireton." 
In  this  his  hatred  of  government  by  the  army 
compels  the  admission  that  monarchy  is  preferable 
to  a  military  despotism  :  "  If  we  must  have  a  king, 
I  for  my  part  would  rather  have  the  prince  than  any 

1  "So  die  the  Leveller  corporals.     Strong  they,  after  their  sort,  for 
the  liberties  of  England  ;  resolute  to  the  very  death." — Carlyle. 

2  Lilburne's  attitude  to  Winstanley's  propaganda  was  similar  to  the 
attitude  of  the  political  Chartists  in  the  igth  century  to  Robert  Owen's 
socialism. 


-1653]  J°hn  Lilburne  287 

man  in  the  world.  .  .  .  For  the  present  army 
to  set  up  the  pretended  Saint  Oliver  or  any  other  as 
their  elected  king,  there  will  be  nothing  thereby 
from  the  beginning  of  the  chapter  to  the  end 
thereof  but  wars  and  the  cutting  of  throats  year 
after  year  ;  yea,  and  the  absolute  keeping  up  of  a 
perpetual  army  under  which  the  people  are  absolute 
and  perfect  slaves." 

Thereupon,  instead  of  bringing  him  to  trial,  the 
government  merely  issued  a  warrant  for  Lilburne's 
arrest.  The  agitator  met  this  by  a  stronger 
manifesto,  "  An  Outcry  of  the  Young  Men  and 
Apprentices  of  London,"  calling  on  the  army  to  rise  in 
support  of  a  democratic  parliament  and  to  vindicate 
the  men  executed  at  Burford.  Some  response  came 
from  the  garrison  at  Oxford,  who  summoned  their 
officers  to  join  in  the  demand  for  a  free  parliament, 
but  no  success  attended  this  step. 

At  last  in  October  Lilburne  was  brought  to  trial 
at  the  Guildhall,  not  on  the  charge  for  which  he  had 
been  first  committed  to  the  Tower  in  March,  but 
for  the  "  treason  "  of  his  later  pamphlets.  The  trial 
is  memorable  for  Lilburne's  demand  that  counsel 
should  be  assigned  to  him  in  the  event  of  legal 
technicalities  arising,  and  for  his  bidding  the  jury 
remember  they  were  judges  of  law  as  well  as  of  fact. 
His  real  defence  lay  in  the  question  he  had  put  so 
often  :  Was  England  to  be  governed  by  the  sword 
and  a  mock  parliament,  or  by  duly  elected  repre- 
sentatives of  the  People  ?  The  jury  understood 
that  Lilburne  was  on  trial  for  putting  that  ques- 
tion, and,  agreeing  with  him,  they  acquitted 
him.  The  verdict  was  received  with  tremendous 
applause,  and  "a  loud  and  unanimous  shout"  of 


288          Leaders  of  the  People         [1647- 

triumph  went  up  from  the  citizens  of  London  in  the 
Guildhall.1 

In  December  Lilburne  was  elected  to  the  common 
council  of  the  city,  but  parliament  promptly  declared 
the  election  void.  "  Fiercely  as  Lilburne  attacked 
Cromwell,  there  was  at  times  considerable  liking 
between  the  two  men,  and  they  met  on  friendly 
terms  before  Cromwell  went  to  Scotland  in  1650. 
Cromwell  assured  Lilburne  of  his  desire  to  make 
England  enjoy  the  real  fruit  of  all  the  army's  pro- 
mises and  declarations,"  and  friendly  relations  lasted 
till  Cromwell's  return.  But,  in  Cromwell's  absence, 
Lilburne  charged  Hazlerigg  with  corruption  in  the 
administration  of  justice  concerning  a  disputed 
colliery  lease  in  Durham,  and  parliament  took  up 
the  matter.  In  January,  1652,  it  declared  Lilburne's 
petition  for  redress  a  libel,  and  imposed  a  fine  of 
.£7,000  with  a  sentence  of  banishment  for  life. 

This  proceeding  by  parliament  revived  the 
methods  of  the  Star  Chamber  in  imposing  a  con- 
viction and  a  sentence  without  trial,  but  the  House 
of  Commons  was  determined  to  stop  Lilburne's 
activities  at  all  cost. 

Cromwell  made  no  effort  to  hinder  the  conviction, 
and  Lilburne  insisted  that  Cromwell's  professions  of 
friendship  were  hypocritical,  and  that  the  general 
himself  was  responsible  for  the  sentence. 

1  "  Then  ensued  a  scene,  the  like  of  which  had  in  all  probability  never 
been  witnessed  in  an  English  court  of  justice,  and  was  never  again  to  be 
witnessed  till  the  seven  bishops  were  freed  by  the  verdict  of  a  jury  from 
the  rage  of  James  II." — S.  R.  Gardiner. 

"In  a  revolution,  where  others  argued  about  the  respective  rights 
of  king  and  parliament,  he  spoke  always  of  the  rights  of  the  people. 
His  dauntless  courage  and  his  power  of  speech  made  him  the  idol  of  the 
mob." — Professor  C.  H.  Firth,  "  Lilburne,"  Dictionary  of  National  Bio- 
graphy. 


-1653]  John   Lilburne  289 


For  the  time  Lilburne  retired  to  Holland,  where 
he  discussed  favourably  the  chances  of  a  royalist 
restoration.  But  on  the  expulsion  of  the  Rump  of 
the  Long  Parliament  the  agitator  at  once  wrote  off 
to  Cromwell  for  permission  to  return  to  England, 
and  getting  no  answer  crossed  to  London  in  June, 
1653,  and  settled  in  lodgings  in  Moorfields.  He  peti- 
tioned Cromwell  and  the  Council  of  State  for  leave 
to  remain  unmolested,  promising  to  live  peacefully, 
but  Cromwell,  with  the  whole  government  on  his 
shoulders,  had  no  willingness  to  incur  the  risk 
Lilburne  and  his  doctrine  of  popular  rights  involved 
to  the  safety  of  the  State. 

Lilburne  was  promptly  arrested  by  Cromwell's 
order  and  brought  to  trial  at  the  Old  Bailey  on  July 
1  3th.  The  government  case  was  that  he  had  re- 
turned to  England  knowing  that  a  sentence  of  death 
was  decreed  by  parliament  if  he  broke  his  exile. 

Lilburne's  defence,  in  the  main,  was  that  the 
parliament  which  had  passed  sentence  was  dead, 
and  that  if  Cromwell  had  acted  justly  in  dissolving 
it,  then  its  unjust  actions  ought  not  to  be  maintained  ; 
if  Cromwell  had  acted  unjustly,  why  was  he  not 
punished  ? 

Again  the  jury  acquitted  him,  and  again  the  people 
of  London  expressed  their  satisfaction  at  the  verdict, 
"  the  very  soldiers  sent  to  guard  the  court  joining  in 
the  shouts,  and  beating  their  drums  and  sounding 
their  trumpets  as  they  passed  along  the  streets  to 
their  quarters." 

But  "  for  the  peace  of  the  nation  "  Cromwell 
would  not  let  Lilburne  be  at  large.  Back  in  the 
Tower,  then  at  Guernsey,  and  then  in  Dover  Castle 
for  more  than  two  years  Lilburne  was  a  prisoner. 


290          Leaders  of  the  People 

His  health  was  broken  in  1656,  and  consumption 
had  set  in.  Death  was  near,  and  for  John  Lilburne 
the  days  of  "carnal  sword-fighting  and  fleshly 
hustlings  and  contests  "  were  over.  He  wrote  to 
Cromwell  from  Dover  Castle  telling  the  Lord 
Protector  of  his  conversion  to  Quakerism,  and 
Cromwell,  assured  that  there  was  to  be  no  more 
agitation  from  "  Free- Born  John,"  granted  his 
release,  and  a  pension  of  403.  a  week. 

The  battle  was  over  for  John  Lilburne,  liberty 
could  not  stay  the  hand  of  death.  The  many  im- 
prisonments and  close  confinements  had  done  their 
work,  and  rapid  consumption  marked  down  the  man 
who  had  stood  up  against  the  whole  might  of 
Cromwell's  government. 

John  Lilburne  died  at  Eltham  in  August,  1657, 
at  the  age  of  forty.  A  year  later,  and  his  old 
antagonist,  and  older  comrade-in-arms,  Oliver 
Cromwell,  Lord  Protector,  was  dead,  and  the 
Commonwealth  government  which  had  contemned 
the  agitation  for  democracy  was  doomed. 


Winstanley  the  Digger 

1649-1650 


AUTHORITIES  :  Winstanley's  Pamphlets  ;  Whitelocke 
— Memorial  of  English  Affairs ;  Clarke  Papers;  L.  H. 
Berens — Digger  Movement  in  the  days  of  the  Common- 
wealth. 


WINSTANLEY  THE   DIGGER 

1649-1650. 

IN  the  spring  of  1649,  the  "  Digger"  movement 
revealed  a  strange  and  unexpected  manifesta- 
tion   of    the    democratic    spirit    in    England. 
Free  communism  had  been  the  creed  of  more 
than  one  Protestant  sect   on  the  continent  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  and  the  Anabaptists   had   been 
conspicuously  identified  with  the  proposal.     But  in 
England   John    Lilburne   and   the    Levellers    were 
attacking     the    parliamentary   government   in    the 
name  of   political  democracy,  and   social   agitation 
had   been    unknown   since   the    Norfolk    Rising  of 
1 549,  save  for  a  riot  against  land  enclosures  at  the 
beginning  of  James  I.'s  reign. 

Gerrard  Winstanley  was  the  leader  at  the  sudden 
outbreak  of  social  discontent,  and  his  "  Digger " 
movement  was  to  end  this  discontent  and  all  other 
miseries  of  the  time  by  getting  rid  of  enclosures  of 
common  lands,  and  allowing  people  to  plough  these 
common  lands  and  waste  spaces,  "that  all  may  feed 
upon  the  crops  of  the  earth,  and  the  burden  of 
poverty  be  removed." 

Little  is  known  of  Winstanley,  and  the  move- 
ment is  shortlived.  The  "Diggers"  never  threatened 
the  safety  of  the  Commonwealth  government  as 
Lilburne  and  the  Levellers  did,  for  Winstanley's 
social  doctrine  included  the  non-resistance  principles 
that  later  found  exponents  in  the  Society  of  Friends, 

293 


294          Leaders  of  the  People         [1649- 

and  the  agrarian  revolution  he  preached  could 
hardly  be  accomplished  without  force  of  arms. 
What  is  notable  about  Winstanley  is  his  witness  to 
the  fact  that  a  social  question  existed — that  he  saw 
beyond  the  Civil  War,  and  the  strife  for  political 
liberties,  a  great  mass  of  poverty  unheeded  ;  and 
seeing  the  miseries  of  his  fellows  resolutely  thought 
out  some  cure  for  their  distress,  and  did  his  best,  as 
it  seemed  to  him,  to  get  this  cure  adopted. 

Neither  the  Council  of  State  nor  the  republican 
army  had  time  or  patience  for  Winstanley's  schemes, 
and  the  "  Diggers "  were  dispersed  with  little 
trouble  ;  but  Winstanley's  religious  teaching  was 
to  exercise  considerable  influence  in  the  world 
when  George  Fox  became  its  preacher,  and  his 
social  teaching  on  the  land  question  has  thousands 
of  disciples  in  Great  Britain  to-day. 

Gerrard  Winstanley  was  born  in  Lancashire  in 
1 609.*  He  seems  to  have  settled  in  London  as  a 
small  trader  and  to  have  lost  what  money  he  had  in 
business — cheated  he  says,  "  in  the  thieving  art  of 
buying  and  selling,  and  by  the  burdens  of  and  for 
the  soldiery  in  the  beginning  of  the  war  " — so  that 
he  was  obliged  "  to  accept  of  the  good -will  of 
friends  to  live  a  country  life."  In  the  country  Win- 
stanley ponders  the  source  of  the  ills  around  him, 
and,  having  some  considerable  gift  of  expression, 
gives  utterance,  in  a  number  of  pamphlets,  to  a  cry 
for  reform,  and  gathers  followers. 

In  December,  1648,  Winstanley  (or  one  of  his 
friends)  issued  the  earliest  of  the  Digger  publica- 
tions under  the  title  of  "  Light  Shining  in  Buck- 

1  See  L.  A.   Berens,  Digger  Movement  in  the  Days  of  the  Common- 
wealth. 


-1650]  Gerrard  Winstanley  295 

inghamshire — A  Discovery  of  the  Main  Ground, 
Original  Cause  of  all  the  Slavery  of  the  World,  but 
chiefly  in  England.  Presented  by  way  of  a  Declara- 
tion of  many  of  the  Well-affected  in  that  County,  to 
all  their  poor  oppressed  Countrymen  in  England. 
And  also  to  the  consideration  of  the  present  army 
under  the  conduct  of  the  Lord  Fairfax." 

A  month  later  and  Winstanley  publishes  his 
"  New  Law  of  Righteousness :  Budding  forth  to 
restore  the  whole  Creation  from  the  Bondage  of  the 
Curse.  Or  a  glimpse  of  the  new  Heaven  and  the 
new  Earth,  wherein  dwells  Righteousness."  Here, 
with  a  good  deal  of  mystical  religious  phrasing  (the 
author  explains  that  when  he  was  in  a  trance  the 
message  came  to  him),  Winstanley  proclaims  his 
calling  and  unfolds  his  agrarian  proposals  : 

And  when  the  Lord  doth  show  unto  me  the  place  and 
manner,  how  He  will  have  us  that  are  called  common  people 
manure  and  work  upon  the  common  lands,  I  will  then  go 
forth  and  declare  it  by  my  action,  to  eat  my  bread  by  the 
sweat  of  my  brow,  without  either  giving  or  taking  hire, 
looking  upon  the  land  as  freely  mine  as  another's. 

There  is  to  be  no  forcible  expropriation  of  land- 
lords : 

If  the  rich  still  hold  fast  to  this  propriety  of  Mine  and 
Thine,  let  them  labour  their  own  lands  with  their  own 
hands.  And  let  the  common  people,  that  say  the  earth  is 
ours,  not  mine,  let  them  labor  together,  and  eat  bread 
together  upon  the  commons,  mountains,  and  hills. 

For  as  the  enclosures  are  called  such  a  man's  land,  and 
such  a  man's  land,  so  the  Commons  and  Heath  are  called  the 
common  people's.  And  let  the  world  see  who  labor  the 
earth  in  righteousness,  and  those  to  whom  the  Lord  gives 
the  blessing,  let  them  be  the  people  that  shall  inherit  the 
earth. 


296          Leaders  of  the  People         [1649- 

None  can  say  that  their  right  is  taken  from  them.  For 
let  the  rich  work  alone  by  themselves  ;  and  let  the  poor  work 
together  by  themselves.  The  rich  in  their  enclosures,  saying, 
This  is  mine  ;  and  the  poor  upon  the  commons,  saying,  This 
is  ours,  the  earth  and  its  fruits  are  common.  And  who  can  be 
offended  at  the  poor  for  doing  this  ?  None  but  covetous, 
proud,  idle,  pampered  flesh,  that  would  have  the  poor  work 
still  for  this  devil  (particular  interest)  to  maintain  his  great- 
ness that  he  may  live  at  ease. 

Was  the  earth  made  for  to  preserve  a  few  covetous, 
proud  men  to  live  at  ease,  and  for  them  to  bag  and  barn  up 
the  treasures  of  the  earth  from  others,  that  these  may  beg  or 
starve  in  a  fruitful  land  :  or  was  it  made  to  preserve  all  her 
children  ?  Let  Reason  and  the  Prophets'  and  Apostles' 
writings  be  judge.  .  .  .  For  the  earth  is  the  Lord's  ; 
that  is  the  spreading  Power  of  Righteousness,  not  the 
inheritance  of  covetous  proud  flesh  that  dies.  If  any  man 
can  say  that  he  makes  corn  or  cattle,  he  may  say,  That  is 
mine.  But  if  the  Lord  made  these  for  the  use  of  His  creation, 
surely  then  the  earth  was  made  by  the  Lord  to  be  a  Common 
Treasury  for  all,  not  a  particular  treasury  for  some. 

Leave  off  dominion  and  lordship  one  over  another  ;  for 
the  whole  bulk  of  mankind  are  but  one  living  earth.  Leave 
off  imprisoning,  whipping,  and  killing,  which  are  but  the 
actings  of  the  curse.  Let  those  that  have  hitherto  had  no 
land,  and  have  been  forced  to  rob  and  steal  through  poverty  ; 
henceforth  let  them  quietly  enjoy  land  to  work  upon,  that 
everyone  may  enjoy  the  benefit  of  his  creation,  and  eat  his 
own  bread  with  the  sweat  of  his  own  brows.  For  surely  this 
particular  propriety  of  mine  and  thine  hath  brought  in  all 
misery  upon  people.  First  it  hath  occasioned  people  to  steal 
from  one  another.  Secondly  it  hath  made  laws  to  hang 
those  that  did  steal.  It  tempts  people  to  do  an  evil  action, 
and  then  kills  them  for  doing  of  it.  Let  all  judge  whether 
this  be  not  a  great  evil. 

In  April,  1649,  the  time  was  ripe — so  Winstanley 
and  his  friends  judged — for  making  a  start  to  get 
rid  of  this  evil. 

The  Council  of  State,  but  a  few  months  old,  and 
much  occupied  with  dangers  in  Scotland  and  Ireland, 


-1650]  Gerrard  Winstanley  297 

and  with  mutinous  Levellers  in  the  army,  was  sud- 
denly informed  of  the  strange  activities  of  "a 
disorderly  and  tumultuous  sort  of  people "  by  one 
Henry  Sanders,  of  Walton-upon-Thames. 

Sanders'  testimony  affirmed  that  "  there  was  one 
Everard,  once  of  the  army  but  was  cashiered,  who 
termeth  himself  a  prophet,  one  Stewer  and  Colten, 
and  two  more,  all  living  at  Cobham,  came  to  St. 
George's  Hill  in  Surrey,  and  began  to  dig  on  that 
side  the  hill  next  to  Camp  Close,  and  sowed  the 
ground  with  parsnips,  carrots,  and  beans.  On 
Monday  following  they  were  there  again,  being 
increased  in  their  number,  and  on  the  next  day  they 
fired  the  heath,  and  burned  at  least  forty  rood  of 
heath,  which  is  a  very  great  prejudice  to  the  town. 
On  Friday  last  they  came  again,  between  twenty 
and  thirty,  and  wrought  all  day  at  digging.  They 
did  then  intend  to  have  two  or  three  ploughs  at 
work,  but  they  had  not  furnished  themselves  with 
seed-corn,  which  they  did  on  Saturday  at  Kingston. 
They  invite  all  to  come  in  and  help  them,  and 
promise  them  meat,  drink,  and  clothes.  They  do 
threaten  to  pull  down  and  level  all  park  pales,  and 
lay  open,  and  intend  to  plant  there  very  shortly. 
They  give  out  they  will  be  four  or  five  thousand 
within  ten  days,  and  threaten  the  neighbouring 
people  there,  that  they  will  make  them  all  come  up 
to  the  hills  and  work  :  and  forewarn  them  suffering 
their  cattle  to  come  near  the  plantation ;  if  they  do, 
they  will  cut  their  legs  off.  It  is  feared  they  have 
some  design  in  hand."1 

The  date  of  this  information  was  April  1 6th,  and 
Bradshaw,  the  President  of  the  Council,  at  once 

1  Clarke  Papers,  vol.  ii. 


298          Leaders  of  the  People         [1649- 

asked  General  Fairfax  "  to  disperse  the  people  so 
met,  and  to  prevent  the  like  for  the  future,  that  a 
malignant  and  disaffected  party  may  not  under  colour 
of  such  ridiculous  people  have  any  opportunity  to 
rendezvous  themselves  in  order  to  do  a  greater 
mischief." 

Fairfax  sent  Captain  John  Gladman  to  attend  to 
the  matter,  and  Gladman  reports  three  days  later 
that  Mr.  Winstanley  and  Mr.  Everard  are  the  chief 
men  responsible,  that  he  "  cannot  hear  that  there 
have  been  above  twenty  of  them  together  since  they 
first  undertook  the  business,"  and  that  Mr.  Win- 
stanley and  Mr.  Everard  will  wait  upon  Lord  Fairfax. 
He  adds  :  "  I  believe  you  will  be  glad  to  be  rid  of 
them  again,  especially  Everard,  who  is  no  other 
than  a  mad  man.  I  intend  to  go  with  two  or  three 
men  to  St.  George's  Hill  this  day  and  persuade 
these  people  to  leave  this  employment  if  I  can,  and 
if  then  I  see  no  more  danger  than  now  I  do  I  shall 
march  back  again  to  London  to-morrow."  Glad- 
man's  opinion  is  that  4<  the  business  is  not  worth  the 
writing  nor  yet  taking  notice  of." 

The  interview  between  Fairfax  and  Winstanley 
and  Everard  took  place  on  April  20,  and  Everard 
explained  that  the  Diggers  "  did  not  intend  to 
meddle  with  any  man's  property  nor  to  break  down 
any  pales  or  enclosures,  but  only  to  meddle  with 
what  was  common  and  untilled,  and  to  make  it 
fruitful  for  the  use  of  man  :  that  they  will  not  defend 
themselves  by  arms,  but  will  submit  unto  authority  ; 
that  as  their  forefathers  lived  in  tents,  so  it  would 
be  suitable  to  their  condition  now  to  live  in  the 
same." 

Fairfax  evidently  decided  that  the  movement  was 


-1650]  Gerrard  Winstanley  299 

not  so  alarming  as  the  Council  of  State  had  repre- 
sented, for  Winstanley  and  his  Diggers  resumed 
their  work,  and  at  the  end  of  May,  Fairfax,  with 
the  officers  of  the  army,  paid  a  visit  to  St.  George's 
Hill.  Winstanley  returned  "  sober  answers  "  to  the 
inquiries  of  Fairfax,  "  though  they  gave  little  satis- 
faction (if  any  at  all)  in  regard  of  the  strangeness  of 
their  action."  Winstanley 's  argument,  often  enlarged 
in  his  pamphlets,  was  that  the  people  were  dis- 
possessed of  their  lands  by  the  crown  at  the  Norman 
Conquest,  and  that  "  the  king  who  possessed  them 
by  the  Norman  Conquest  being  dead,  they  were 
returned  again,  being  Crown  Lands,  to  the  Common 
People  of  England." 

This  was  not  conclusive  to  their  visitors,  and 
"  some  officers  wished  they  had  no  further  plot  in 
what  they  did,  and  that  no  more  was  intended  than 
what  they  did  pretend."  To  the  objection  that  the 
ground  was  too  poor  to  repay  cultivation,  "  the 
Diggers  answered  they  would  use  their  endeavours 
and  leave  the  success  to  God,  who  had  promised  to 
make  the  barren  ground  fruitful."  Public  opinion 
gave  out  that  the  Diggers  were  "  sober,  honest 
men,"  and  that  "  the  ground  will  probably  in  a  short 
time  yield  them  some  fruit  of  their  labour,  how 
contemptible  soever  they  do  yet  appear  to  be." 

Encouraged  by  Fairfax's  "  kindness  and  modera- 
tion," Winstanley  appeals  to  him  in  June  against 
the  interference  of  the  local  landowners,  and  getting 
no  response  (for  Fairfax  had  said  that  the  Diggers 
were  to  be  left  to  "the  Gentlemen  of  the  County 
and  the  Law  of  the  Land  "),  publishes  an  appeal  to 
the  House  of  Commons  against  his  arrest  for  tres- 
pass by  the  Lords  of  Manors  in  Surrey.  The 


300          Leaders  of  the  People         [1649- 

House  of  Commons,  occupied  with  State  matters, 
turned  an  indifferent  ear  to  Winstanley's  complaint, 
and  the  leader  of  the  Diggers  sent  a  "  Watchword 
to  the  City  of  London  and  the  Army,"  telling  the 
wrongs  the  Diggers  suffered  at  the  hands  of  the 
law  for  "  digging  upon  the  barren  common  " — how 
they  were  mulcted  in  damages  at  £10  a  man,  with 
costs  at  twenty-nine  shillings  and  a  penny,  and  taken 
in  execution,  and  how  their  cows  were  seized  by  the 
bailiffs.  At  the  end  of  November  the  very  huts 
they  had  built  were  pulled  down,  and  it  was  a  hard 
winter  for  the  little  colony  still  left  on  St.  George's 
Hill. 

Winstanley  does  not  merely  relate  his  injuries  in 
these  publications,  he  is  all  the  time  urging  that  his 
plan  for  setting  people  upon  the  common  lands  is 
the  needful  thing  in  England,  that  a  common  owner- 
ship of  land  is  God's  will,  and  that  the  crown  lands 
taken  by  the  Normans  must  revert  to  the  people  on 
the  execution  of  the  king. 

In  the  spring  of  1650  an  attempt  was  made  to 
extend  the  digging  propaganda — for  the  planting  of 
St.  George's  Hill  was  doomed — and  some  of  Win- 
Stanley's  disciples  made  a  tour  through  the  counties 
of  Middlesex,  Bedford,  Hertford,  Huntingdon,  and 
Northampton,  settling  down  at  last  on  some  waste 
ground  near  Wellingborough.  Here  they  were 
very  soon  arrested  by  a  local  justice  of  the  peace, 
the  Council  of  State  ordered  their  prosecution,  and 
the  movement  was  suppressed. 

To  the  Council  of  State  these  Diggers  were 
"  Levellers,"1  "  intruders  upon  other  men's  proper- 

1  Government     rarely    distinguishes    between    different    schools    of 
agitators. 


-1650]  Gerrard  Winstanley  301 

ties,"  "seditious  and  tumultuous,"  against  whom  the 
public  peace  must  be  preserved. 

Of  Winstanley's  future,  when  the  days  of  the 
digging  were  over,  nothing  seems  to  be  known. 
Only  one  pamphlet  is  issued  by  him  after  1650— 
"  The  Law  of  Freedom  in  a  Platform  ;  or,  True 
Magistracy  Restored  " — an  open  letter  to  Oliver 
Cromwell,  February,  1652.  With  this  final  mani- 
festo on  the  land  question,  and  on  the  whole  social 
question,  as  he  saw  it,  Gerrard  Winstanley  disap- 
pears from  history.  In  the  multitude  of  prophets 
and  preachers,  visionaries  and  practical  reformers  of 
the  Commonwealth,  Winstanley  is  little  heeded  by 
his  contemporaries.  The  importance  of  his  mission 
is  seen  more  clearly  to-day,  when  statesmen,  politi- 
cians, and  philanthropists  all  urge  agrarian  changes 
and  the  excellence  of  land  culture. 

As  to  Winstanley's  claim  on  behalf  of  the  people 
to  the  common  lands,  the  advantage  of  possession 
of  these  lands  was  realized  by  the  landowners  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  from  1760  to  1830  more 
than  a  thousand  acts  of  parliament  were  passed  for 
enclosing  these  lands.1 

In  "The  Diggers  Song,"  (of  unknown  authorship2), 
the  outlook  of  Winstanley  and  his  followers  is 
expressed  in  popular  form  : 

You  noble  Diggers  all,  stand  up  now,  stand  up  now, 

You  noble  Diggers  all,  stand  up  now, 
The  waste  land  to  maintain,  seeing  Cavaliers  by  name, 
Your  digging  do  disdain  ;  and  persons  all  defame. 

Stand  up  now,  stand  up  now. 

1  Between    1710  and    1867   the   number  of   acres   so   enclosed   was 
7,660,439. 

2  Clarke  Papers,  vol.  ii. 


302          Leaders  of  the  People         [1649- 

Your  houses  they  pull  down,  stand  up  now,  stand  up  now, 

Your  houses  they  pull  down,  stand  up  now  ; 
Your  houses  they  pull  down  to  fright  poor  men  in  town, 
But  the  Gentry  must  come  down,  and  the  poor  shall  wear  the 

crown. 
Stand  up  now,  Diggers  all  ! 

With  spades,  and  hoes,  and  plowes,  stand  up  now,  stand  up 
now, 

With  spades,  and  hoes,  and  plowes,  stand  up  now  ; 
Your  freedom  to  uphold,  seeing  Cavaliers  are  bold 
To  kill  you  if  they  could,  and  rights  from  you  withhold. 

Stand  up  now,  Diggers  all ! 

Their  self-will  is  their  law,  stand  up  now,  stand  up  now, 

Their  self-will  is  their  law,  stand  up  now  ; 
Since  tyranny  came  in,  they  count  it  now  no  sin 
To  make  a  gaol  a  gin,  to  starve  poor  men  therein. 

Stand  up  now,  stand  up  now. 

The  Gentry  are  all  round,  stand  up  now,  stand  up  now, 

The  Gentry  are  all  round,  stand  up  now  ; 
The  Gentry  are  all  round,  on  each  side  they  are  found, 
Their  wisdoms  so  profound  to  cheat  us  of  our  ground. 

Stand  up  now,  stand  up  now. 

The  Lawyers  they  conjoin,  stand  up  now,  stand  up  now, 

The  Lawyers  they  conjoin,  stand  up  now  ; 
To  arrest  you  they  advise,  such  fury  they  devise, 
The  devil  in  them  lies,  and  hath  blinded  both  their  eyes. 

Stand  up  now,  stand  up  now. 

The  Clergy  they  come  in,  stand  up  now,  stand  up  now, 

The  Clergy  they  come  in,  stand  up  now  ; 
The  Clergy  they  come  in,  and  say  it  is  a  sin 
That  we  should  now  begin  our  freedom  for  to  win. 

Stand  up  now,  Diggers  all  ! 

The  tithes  they  yet  will  have,  stand  up  now,  stand  up  now, 

The  tithes  they  yet  will  have,  stand  up  now  ; 
The  tithes  they  yet  will  have,  and  Lawyers  their  fees  crave, 
And  this  they  say  is  brave,  to  make  the  poor  their  slave. 
Stand  up  now,  Diggers  all  ! 


-1650]  Gerrard  Winstanley  303 

'Gainst  Lawyers  and  'gainst  Priests,  stand  up  now,  stand  up 
now, 

'Gainst  Lawyers  and  'gainst  Priests,  stand  up  now ; 
For  tyrants  they  are  both,  even  flat  against  their  oath, 
To  grant  us  they  are  loath,  free  meat,  and  drink  and  cloth. 

Stand  up  now,  Diggers  all  ! 

The  club  is  all  their  law,  stand  up  now,  stand  up  now, 

The  club  is  all  their  law,  stand  up  now  ; 
The  club  is  all  their  law,  to  keep  poor  men  in  awe, 
But  they  no  vision  saw,  to  maintain  such  a  law. 

Stand  up  now,  Diggers  all  ! 

The  Cavaliers  are  foes,  stand  up  now,  stand  up  now, 

The  Cavaliers  are  foes,  stand  up  now  ; 
The  Cavaliers  are  foes,  themselves  they  do  disclose 
By  verses,  not  in  prose,  to  please  the  singing  boys. 

Stand  up  now,  Diggers  all ! 

To  conquer  them  by  love,  come  in  now,  come  in  now, 

To  conquer  them  by  love,  come  in  now  ; 
To  conquer  them  by  love,  as  it  does  you  behove, 
For  He  is  King  above,  no  Power  is  like  to  Love. 

Glory  here,  Diggers  all. 


Major  Cartwright 
"  The  Father  of  Reform  " 

1775-1824 


AUTHORITIES  :    Life  and   Correspondence    of  Major 
Cartwright,  edited   by  his  Niece,    1826  ;  A   Memoir  of 
John   Cartwright  the  Reformer,  1831  ;  The  Times,  Sep- 
tember 25th,  1824;  Graham  Wallas—  Francis  Place. 


MAJOR    CARTWRIGHT 

(From  a  Contemporary  Drawing.) 


MAJOR  CARTWRIGHT 
"THE  FATHER  OF  REFORM 

1775-1824. 


1 


substance  of  Major  Cartwright's  life  is 
told  on  the  pedestal  beneath  his  statue  in 
the  dingy  garden  of  Burton  Crescent,  to 
the  south  of  Euston  Road,  in  London. 


JOHN    CARTWRIGHT, 

Born  28th  September,  1740.     Died  23rd  September,  1824. 

The  Firm,  Consistent  and  Persevering'  Advocate  of  Universal 

Suffrage,  Equal  Representation,  Vote  by  Ballot  and  Annual 

Parliaments. 

He  was  the  first  English  Writer  who  openly  maintained  the 
Independence  of  the  United  States  of  America,  and  although 
his  distinguished  merits  as  a  Naval  Officer  in  1776  presented 
the  most  flattering  Prospects  of  Professional  Advancement, 
yet  he  nobly  refused  to  draw  his  Sword  against  the  Rising 
Liberties  of  an  oppressed  and  struggling  People. 

In  Grateful  Commemoration  of  his  inflexible  integrity,  exalted 
Patriotism,  "  profound  Constitutional  Knowledge,"  and  in  sin- 
cere admiration  of  the  unblemished  Virtues  of  his  Private  Life, 

THIS    STATUE 

was  erected  by  Public  Subscription  near  the  spot  where  he 
closed  his  useful  and  meritorious  career. 

There  is  nothing  false  or  exaggerated  in  this 
epitaph.  Fox,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  testified 
to  Cartwright's  "  profound  constitutional  know- 
ledge." Hazlitt,  who  never  met  Cartwright,  classed 

307 


308          Leaders  of  the  People         [1775- 

him  with  the  men  of  one  idea  (and  lingered  over  the 
subject),  but  the  charge  is  ill-founded.  It  is  true  that 
for  nearly  fifty  years,  in  season  and  out  of  season, 
Cartwright,  a  pupil  of  Locke  in  politics,  contended 
publicly  for  annual  parliaments  and  manhood  suf- 
frage, claiming  personality  and  not  property  as  the 
ground  for  enfranchisement,  and  insisting  that  while 
the  right  of  the  rich  and  the  poor  to  the  vote  was 
equal,  the  need  of  the  latter  was  far  greater.  But 
this  agitation  was  by  no  means  the  limit  either  of  his 
ideas  or  his  activities. 

Entering  the  navy  at  eighteen,  John  Cartwright, 
who  came  of  an  old  Nottingham  family,  devised 
improvements  in  the  gun  service,  and,  made  a  lieu- 
tenant, was  marked  for  high  promotion.  The  revolt 
of  the  American  colonies  cut  short  his  professional 
career.  An  innate  love  of  liberty  compelled  the 
young  naval  officer  to  side  with  the  colonists,  and  he 
writes  in  1776  that  it  is  a  mistaken  notion  that  the 
planting  of  colonies  and  the  extending  of  empire  are 
necessarily  the  same  things.  Self-governing  colonies, 
he  declares,  bound  to  England  only  by  "the  ties  of 
blood  and  mutual  interests,  by  sincere  love  and 
friendship,  which  abhors  dependence,  and  by 
every  other  cementing  principle  which  hath  power 
to  take  hold  of  the  human  heart,"  are  to  be 
desired. 

Lord  Howe  put  Cartwright's  principles  to  the  test 
by  inviting  him  to  join  the  expedition  against  the 
Americans,  and  Cartwright,  who  was  "passionately 
attached  to  the  navy,"  and  had  an  immense  admira- 
tion for  Howe,  could  only  answer  that  he  was  unable 
to  take  part  in  a  war  he  thought  unjust.  With  this 
refusal  his  naval  services  were  ended,  in  spite  of 


-1824]  Major  Cartwright  309 

Howe's  quiet  and  dignified  reply  that  "opinions  in 
politics  are  to  be  treated  like  opinions  in  religion." 
(No  word  of  reproach  came  from  Howe,  no  taunt  of 
want  of  courage  or  lack  of  patriotism.) 

Cartwright  never  condemned  all  war.  He  urged 
in  a  letter  to  a  nephew  in  the  army  that  the  answer 
to  the  question  of  the  justice  or  injustice  of  a  war 
decided  whether  justifiable  homicide  or  wilful  murder 
was  committed  by  those  engaged  in  battle.  He 
hated  standing  armies  and  barracks  and  barrack  life, 
and  all  the  pomp  and  glory  of  militarism,  as  heartily 
as  he  hated  the  attempt  to  coerce  the  colonists.  But 
no  sooner  was  he  out  of  the  navy  than,  with  a  major's 
commission,  he  at  once  set  to  work  to  train  the  Not- 
tinghamshire militia,  only  retiring  from  this  post  in 
1791  when  the  government  cancelled  his  appoint- 
ment for  attending  a  meeting  called  to  celebrate  the 
fall  of  the  Bastille. 

The  militia  in  Cartwright's  view  was  strictly  a 
citizen  army  for  home  defence.  "The  militia,"  he 
wrote,  "  by  its  institution  is  not  intended  to  spread 
the  dominion  or  to  vindicate  in  war  the  honour  of 
the  crown,  but  it  is  to  preserve  our  laws  and  liberties, 
and  therein  to  secure  the  existence  of  the  State." 
Thirteen  years  before  the  fall  of  the  Bastille  Major 
Cartwright  had  the  cap  of  liberty  displayed  on  the 
banners  and  engraved  on  the  buttons  of  the  Notting- 
hamshire Militia.  A  greater  service  than  providing 
symbols  of  liberty  was  rendered  to  the  army  by 
Cartwright  in  the  matter  of  better  clothing  for  the 
men.  The  misery  endured  by  ill-clad  sentries 
aroused  his  compassion  and  indignation,  and  Cart- 
wright worried  the  government  until  it  provided 
great-coats  for  all  private  soldiers. 


310          Leaders  of  the  People         [1775- 

The  humaner  courage  is  as  conspicuous  in  John 
Cartwright's  long  life  as  his  political  enthusiasm. 

Four  times  he  risked  his  life  to  save  others  from 
drowning,  rescuing  two  men  from  the  Trent,  a  naval 
officer  at  sea,  and,  in  late  middle-life,  a  small  boy 
who  had  fallen  into  the  New  River,  near  London. 
In  the  year  1800,  hearing  of  a  riot  planned  at 
Sheffield,  Cartwright  made  his  way  alone  to  the 
barn  where  the  conspirators  were  assembled,  and 
stayed  all  night,  reasoning  with  them  against  their 
project.  In  the  morning  the  confederates,  dissuaded 
from  violence,  quietly  dispersed,  and  the  riot  was 
prevented. 

An  untiring  advocacy  of  democratic  politics  earned 
for  Cartwright,  justly,  the  title  of  "  The  Father  of 
Reform."  He  was  the  real  founder  of  that  move- 
ment for  political  reform,  which  in  the  nineteenth 
century  swept  away  rotten  boroughs,  gave  repre- 
sentation to  all  towns  of  importance,  and  extended 
the  franchise  to  the  great  bulk  of  male  householders 
in  town  and  country ;  which  to-day  presses  towards 
a  general  suffrage  for  men  and  women. 

Major  Cartwright  began  his  speeches  and 
pamphlets  on  behalf  of  political  reform  in  1776, 
just  after  his  retirement  from  the  navy,  and  his 
acceptance  of  the  commission  in  the  militia. 

The  ideas  of  the  French  Encyclopaedists,  the 
writings  of  Rousseau,  and  the  revolt  of  the  American 
colonists,  had  aroused  a  belief  in  social  equality, 
and  the  "natural"  rights  of  man,  and  this  belief 
Cartwright  championed  till  his  death.  His  early 
pamphlets,  beginning  with  "  Legislative  Rights  of 
the  Commonalty  Vindicated,"  (1777)  are  heavy 
reading  to-day,  but  in  them  Cartwright  argued  for 


-1824]  Major  Cartwright  311 

all  the  famous  "  six  points  "  of  the  People's  Charter 
of  fifty  years  later — Universal  Manhood  Suffrage, 
Annual  Parliaments,  Vote  by  Ballot,  Abolition  of 
Property  Qualification  for  Parliamentary  Candidates, 
Payment  of  Members,  and  Equal  Electoral  Districts. 
He  even  uses  the  modern  phrase  in  urging  "  one 
man  one  vote." 

Unlike  Thomas  Paine,  and  many  of  the  "  Radical 
Reformers, "Cartwright  pleads  for  political  democracy 
as  the  natural  outcome  of  the  Christian  faith,  main- 
taining that  "  No  man  can  have  a  right  sense  and 
belief  of  Christianity  who  denies  the  equality  of  all 
conditions  of  men."  Incidentally,  challenged  on  the 
point  of  why  not  Votes  for  Women  ?  Cartwright 
could  only  fall  back  on  certain  passages  in  the 
Bible  to  justify  his  objection  to  Women's  Enfran- 
chisement. Nothing  was  more  abhorrent  to  his 
mind  than  the  notion  that  government  was  a  matter 
for  "experts,"  an  exclusive  affair  for  persons  with 
specially  trained  intelligences.  "  Of  all  the  errors 
to  which  mankind  have  ever  submitted  their  under- 
standings," he  wrote,  "there  is  no  one  to  be  more 
lamented  than  that  of  conceiving  the  business  of 
civil  government  to  be  above  the  comprehension  of 
ordinary  capacities." 

The  poor,  because  of  their  very  poverty,  had  a 
need  for  the  vote  and  for  parliamentary  representa- 
tion which  the  man  of  property  could  not  experience. 
This  Cartwright  emphasised  in  a  petition  he  pre- 
sented to  the  House  of  Commons  as  late  as  1820  : 

And  when  your  Honourable  House  shall  further  consider 
that  the  humblest  mortal  on  earth  is  equally  a  co-heir  of  an 
immortality  with  the  most  exalted  who  now  wears  stars,  or 
coronets,  or  crowns,  your  petitioner  hopes  that  your  Honour- 


312          Leaders  of  the  People         [1775- 

able  House  will  rise  superior  to  the  mean  thoughts  and  vulgar 
prejudices  of  the  uncharitable  among  the  wealthy,  the  ignorant, 
the  interested,  the  vain,  and  the  proud  ;  and  will  acknowledge 
that,  in  reference  to  the  respective  claims  of  legislative  repre- 
sentation by  the  poor  and  the  rich,  the  poor  have  equal  right 
but  far  more  need. 

Enthusiasm  and  an  entirely  disinterested  zeal  for 
democracy  kept  the  spirit  of  youth  in  Cartwright, 
and  carried  him  at  the  age  of  80  over  a  trial  for 
sedition  undisturbed.  His  zeal  was  not  to  be 
quenched.  "  Moderation  in  practice  may  be  com- 
mendable," he  declared,  "but  moderation  in  principle 
is  detestable.  Can  we  trust  a  man  who  is  moderately 
honest,  or  esteem  a  woman  who  is  moderately 
virtuous  ?  " 

This  very  allegiance  to  principle  had  its  draw- 
backs in  the  world  of  practical  politics,  of  corruption 
and  compromise.  Three  times  Major  Cartwright 
stood  for  parliament :  for  the  county  of  Nottingham 
in  1780,  for  Boston  in  1806  and  1807  ;  and  on  each 
occasion  he  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  poll.  His 
nominations  for  Westminster  in  1818  and  1819 
received  no  serious  support  at  all.  The  old  major 
was  no  more  distressed  by  any  feeling  of  personal 
disappointment  at  these  defeats  than  he  was  cast 
down  at  seeing  no  signs  of  the  triumph  of  political 
democracy  in  his  lifetime.  At  eighty-four  we  find 
him  writing  cheerfully,  "  To  despair  in  a  good  cause 
is  to  approach  towards  atheism." 

Cartwright  did  not  live  to  see  the  passage  of  the 
great  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  Wilkes'  motion  for 
reform  in  1776  had  been  negatived  in  the  House  of 
Commons  without  a  division.  In  1780  the  Duke 
of  Richmond's  motion  in  the  House  of  Lords  for 


-1824]  Major  Cartwright  313 

manhood  suffrage  and  annual  parliaments  was 
mocked  by  the  outbreak  of  the  Gordon  ("  No 
Popery ")  Riots  in  London  on  the  very  day  the 
motion  was  made.  Pitt's  third  and  last  effort  for 
parliamentary  reform  was  rejected  in  1785.  The 
French  Revolution  turned  men's  minds  in  Great 
Britain  towards  democracy,  but  reaction  followed 
hard  on  the  Terror  in  Paris,  and  for  a  time  a 
government  terror  crushed  every  expression  in 
favour  of  political  liberty  in  England.  Sir  Francis 
Burdett  became  the  parliamentary  leader  of  the 
"  radical  reformers  "  early  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  in  1809  found  fifteen  supporters  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  Ten  years  later  the  government,  in  the 
face  of  a  strong  working-class  movement  for  political 
reform,  brought  out  the  military  against  the  people 
at  a  peaceful  meeting  held  at  Peterloo,  near  Man- 
chester, and  followed  this  up  by  six  repressive  acts 
of  parliament,  and  a  general  prosecution  of  the 
leaders  of  the  reform  agitation. 

Cartwight  was  eighty  when,  with  several  friends,  he 
was  charged  "  with  being  a  malicious,  seditious,  evil- 
minded  person,  and  with  unlawfully  and  maliciously 
intending  and  designing  to  raise  disaffection  and 
discontent  in  the  minds  of  his  majesty's  subjects." 

All  England  knew  that  Major  Cartwright  was  a 
single-minded  and  high-principled  man,  in  whose 
heart  was  neither  guile  nor  malice,  a  man  who  had 
proved  his  loyalty  and  patriotism  over  and  over 
again,  and  was  no  more  seditious  than  he  was  evil- 
minded  or  disaffected.  Apart  from  his  advocacy  of 
political  reform  and  his  services  to  the  militia,  Cart- 
wright had  done  much  for  farming  and  agriculture, 
he  had  helped  Clarkson  and  Wilberforce  in  their 


314          Leaders  of  the  People         [1775- 

anti-slavery  work,  and  he  had  called  the  attention 
of  the  government,  as  loudly  as  he  could,  to  the 
defenceless  state  of  the  east  coast  against  foreign 
invasion.  Yet  in  1820  a  British  jury,  obedient 
to  the  orders  of  a  political  judge,  found  John 
Cartwright  guilty  of  "  maliciously  intending  and 
designing  to  raise  disaffection  and  discontent,"  and 
a  fine  of  £100  was  inflicted. 

Francis  Place,  the  radical  tailor  of  Charing  Cross, 
in  whose  shop  the  later  Chartists  and  Reformers  were 
to  be  found,  gives  his  impression  of  Major  Cart- 
wright  as  he  knew  him  in  old  age  : 

"  When  he  was  in  town  he  used  frequently  to  sup 
with  me,  eating  some  raisins  he  brought  in  his  pocket, 
and  drinking  weak  gin  and  water.  He  was  cheerful, 
agreeable,  and  full  of  curious  anecdote.  He  was, 
however,  in  political  matters  exceedingly  trouble- 
some and  sometimes  as  exceedingly  absurd.  He 
had  read  but  little,  or  to  little  purpose,  and  knew 
nothing  of  general  principles.  He  entertained  a 
vague  and  absurd  notion  of  the  political  arrange- 
ments of  the  Anglo-Saxons,  and  sincerely  believed 
that  these  semi-barbarians  were  not  only  a  political 
people,  but  that  their  'twofold  polity,'  arms-bearing 
and  representation,  were  universal  and  perfect."1 

To  Place,  chief  political  wire-puller  of  his  age, 
industrious  and  persistent  in  getting  things  done, 
with  a  typical  cockney  politician's  scorn  of  dis- 
interested enthusiasm,  Major  Cartwright  appeared 
"troublesome"  and  "absurd" — Francis  Place  had 
quite  an  honest  liking  for  the  "old  gentleman,"  as 
he  called  him,  all  the  same.  By  the  government 
Cartwright  stood  convicted  as  a  "seditious,  evil- 

1  See  Graham  Wallas,  Life  of  Francis  Place. 


-1824]  Major  Cartwright  315 

minded  person."  Posterity  is  content  to  know 
John  Cartwright  by  the  title  his  contemporaries 
conferred  upon  him — the  Father  of  Reform — and 
to  rank  him  as  the  foremost  man  in  England  in 
the  eighteenth  century  to  raise  the  standard  of 
Political  Democracy. 


Ernest  Jones  and  Chartism 

1838-1854 


AUTHORITIES:  R.  G.  Gamage — History  of  the  Chartist 
Movement  ;  Thos.  Frost — Forty  Years'  Recollections  ; 
Ernest  Charles  Jones — Songs  of  Democracy ;  Graham 
Wallas — Life  of  Francis  Place,'  J.  A.  Hobson — Ernest 
Jones,  in  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  ;  The  Times, 
Jan.  27,  29;  Mar.  31,  1869. 


ERNEST  JONES  AND 
CHARTISM 

1838-1854. 


I 


Chartist  agitation  was  at  once  the 
largest,  the  most  revolutionary,  and  the 
least  successful  of  all  the  serious  political 
movements  of  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  For  ten  years,  with  varying 
fortune,  it  threatened  the  authority  of  parliament, 
and  then  slowly  expired — destroyed  by  its  own 
internal  weakness  and  the  quarrels  of  its  leaders 
rather  than  by  the  repression  of  the  government. 
The  failure  of  the  great  Reform  Act  of  1832  to 
accomplish  any  particular  improvement  in  the  lot  of 
the  mass  of  working  people  brought  the  Chartist 
movement  to  life,1  and  roused  the  politically  minded 
leaders  of  the  workmen  to  agitate  for  changes  in  the 
constitution  that  would  place  political  power  in  the 
hands  of  the  whole  people. 

The  six  points  of  the  Charter,  embodied  in  the 
"  People's  Charter  "  drawn  up  by  Francis  Place  and 
Lovett  in  1838,  revived  the  old  programme  of 
Major  Cartwright  and,  in  substance,  the  earlier 
demands  of  John  Lilburne  and  the  Levellers. 
Universal  manhood  suffrage,  the  ballot,  payment  of 
members  of  parliament,  equal  electoral  districts, 

1  "  Disappointment  bitter  and  wide-spread  was  following  closely  upon 
the  inevitable  failure  of  the  extravagant  expectations  and  overheated 
hopes  which  the  agitation  for  parliamentary  reform  had  kindled." — F. 
York  Powell,  The  Queens  Reign  :  a  Survey, 

319 


320          Leaders  of  the  People         [1838- 

abolition  of  property  qualification  for  members,  and 
annual  parliaments,  these  were  the  "six  points"  of 
the  Charter,  the  platform  of  its  advocates,  and  for 
ten  years  the  hope  of  multitudes  of  earnest  and 
devoted  men  and  women. 

Francis  Place  and  the  Working- Men's  Associ- 
ation which  gave  Chartism  its  name  and  programme 
never  had  any  considerable  voice  in  its  direction.1 

Feargus  O'Connor,  who  had  sat  in  parliament 
from  1832  to  1835  for  an  Irish  constituency,  was 
from  the  first  the  real  leader  of  the  movement.  His 
personality  and  his  rhetorical  powers  roused  the 
manufacturing  districts  in  the  North  and  the 
Midlands  to  form  political  unions  for  the  Charter  in 
1838,  and  his  presence  dominated  the  first  Con- 
vention, held  in  London,  with  Lovett  for  its 
secretary.  Later,  O'Connor's  obvious  weaknesses, 
his  vanity  and  egotism,  his  want  of  self-control  and 
that  "  one  fatal  disqualification  for  a  leader  of 
revolt — the  fear  of  the  police  "2 — left  leadership  in 
his  hands,  but  left  him  a  leader  without  followers. 

Next  to  O'Connor  stood  another  Irish  orator, 
James  Bronterre  O'Brien,  a  man  of  finer  character, 
and  clearer  head,  but  smaller  gifts  of  command. 

South  Wales,  the  manufacturing  districts  of 
Lancashire  and  Yorkshire,  and  towns  like  Birming- 
ham, Leicester,  and  Northampton,  were  the  strong- 
holds of  Chartism,  and  "in  the  dark  days  of  the  late 
thirties  and  early  forties  it  was  a  real  and  dangerous 
power."3  Feargus  O'Connor  never  advocated  an 
armed  rising,  and  advised  the  abandonment  of  the 
huge  torchlight  processions  ;  but  pikes  were  being 

1  See  Graham  Wallas,  Life  of  Francis  Place. 

2  Herbert  Paul,  History  of  Modern  England.  3  Ibid. 


-1854]  Ernest  Jones  321 

fashioned  and  men  were  being  drilled  in  preparation 
for  a  revolution  that  was  to  end  the  Whig  rule,  and 
give  the  working  classes  the  reins  of  government. 
The  circulation  of  the  Northern  Star,  O'Connor's 
weekly  paper,  stood  at  50,000  in  those  days. 

Riots  at  Newport  (Monmouth)  and  Birmingham 
in  1839,  followed  by  several  arrests  and  imprison- 
ments of  the  Chartist  leaders  the  following  year, 
ended  for  the  time  all  notions  of  a  successful 
revolution.  Lord  John  Russell  declared  strongly 
against  manhood  suffrage  when  the  question  was 
raised  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  on  a  division 
in  the  House  the  petition  for  the  Charter  was  rejected 
by  237  to  48  votes. 

The  outbreak  at  Birmingham,  provoked,  in  the 
first  place,  by  the  interference  of  a  body  of  London 
police  with  an  orderly  meeting  in  the  Bull  Ring, 
was  put  down  in  two  days  by  the  soldiers  ;  but  not 
till  many  houses  had  been  attacked  and  a  consider- 
able amount  of  property  destroyed.  No  robberies 
or  petty  thefts  accompanied  the  riot. 

At  Newport  the  harsh  prison  treatment  of  Vincent, 
a  Chartist  advocate,  convicted  for  what  was  held  to 
be  a  political  offence,  brought  a  crowd  of  10,000 
men,  led  by  Frost,  William,  and  Jones,  to  demand 
his  release.  The  insurgents  had  a  few  rifles  and 
pikes,  but  were  generally  unarmed,  and  the  fire  of 
the  military  soon  overpowered  them.  But  lives 
were  lost  on  both  sides,  and  Frost  and  his  two 
lieutenants  were  sentenced  to  death,  though  the 
sentence  was  at  once  reduced  to  transportation  for 
life,  and  some  years  later  to  simple  banishment  from 
British  dominions. 

Feargus  O'Connor,  Bronterre  O'Brien,  and  all  the 


322          Leaders  of  the  People         [1838- 

chief  speakers  of  the  movement  were  brought  to 
trial  for  seditious  utterance  in  1840,  and  in  most 
cases  sent  to  prison  either  for  twelve  months  or  two 
years. 

With  these  imprisonments  and  the  general  election 
of  1841  came  the  first  serious  disintegration  of  the 
Chartist  movement.1  O'Brien  and  O'Connor  differed 
vigorously  on  the  question  of  election  policy,  and 
before  they  were  released  from  prison  were  express- 
ing their  opinions  in  the  Northern  Star.  O'Connor, 
full  of  wrath  at  the  repressive  treatment  meted  out 
to  Chartists  by  the  Whig  Government,  was  for 
attacking  the  Whigs  at  the  election,  and  O'Brien 
objected  to  this  as  a  pro-Tory  policy.2 

The  decision  to  run  independent  Chartist  candi- 
dates for  parliament  in  certain  constituencies,  and 
the  failure  of  these  candidates  to  get  returned  on 
the  limited  franchise  of  1832,  increased  disunion  in 
the  Chartist  ranks  and  brought  demoralisation. 

To  make  matters  worse  for  the  movement,  several 
prominent  Chartists  left  prison  with  fresh  notions 
and  ideas  of  reform,  which  had  come  to  them  in 
their  long  hours  of  solitude  and  reflection.  Lovett, 
imprisoned  in  connection  with  the  Birmingham  riot, 
though  he  was  entirely  innocent  of  giving  any 
encouragement  to  violence,  on  his  release  was  full 
of  vast  plans  for  national  education,  convinced  that 

1  "Want  of  leaders  and  organization,  and   the   great  difference  in 
objects  among1  the  Chartists  themselves,  led  to  their  failure.    For  a  while 
Chartism  was  stayed." — Professor  T.  F.  Tout,  England  from  1689. 

2  The  differences  between  the  two  became  more  acute  when  Feargus 
O'Connor  started   his   land   colonization   schemes   a   few   years   later. 
O'Brien   opposed   these   schemes,  which  all  ended   in    heavy  financial 
losses,  and  urged  sticking  to  political  reform.     From  1842  O'Brien  was 
practically  outside  the  Chartist  movement,  though  it  was  not  till  1848  he 
formally  retired.     He  died  in  poverty  in  1864,  after  giving  some  help  to 
the  middle-class  radical  movement  for  household  suffrage. 


-1854]  Ernest  Jones  323 

education  must  precede  political  democracy.  Vincent 
had  become  a  strong  temperance  advocate,  and 
henceforth  must  give  himself  to  the  work  of  a 
teetotal  lecturer.  Other  men  were  for  bringing  in 
religion  by  "  Chartist  Churches."  l  Antagonism  to 
the  anti-corn  law  league  of  Cobden  and  Bright, 
and  later  his  own  "  National  Land  Company"  ex- 
periments, withdrew  Feargus  O'Connor  from  actual 
Chartist  propaganda. 

The  movement  languished.  But  in  spite  of 
government  repression,  the  indifference  of  parlia- 
ment, the  hostility  of  the  wealthier  classes,  and  its 
own  jarring  elements  of  discord,  Chartism  was  not 
dead.2 

The  misery  of  the  English  people  kept  it  from 
death.  With  one  in  every  eleven  of  the  industrial 
population  a  pauper  in  1842,  general  satisfaction  with 
the  state  of  government  was  impossible  for  men  of 
strong  social  sympathies.  Some  exerted  themselves, 
like  Sadler  and  Oastler,  in  following  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury's  entirely  disinterested  and  successful  crusade 
against  the  horrors  of  factory  oppression.  Others 
supported  the  Free  Trade  agitation. 

To  one  man,  Ernest  Jones,  it  seemed,  in  1845, 
that  before  all  else  must  come  political  enfranchise- 
ment, that  the  social  miseries  and  discontents  of 

1  A  similar  impulse  fifty  years  later  brought  "  Labour  Churches"  into 
existence. 

2  "  The   ministers    had    met    the    Chartist    outbreaks    with    strong-, 
repressive  measures,  and  here  they  had  the  concurrence  of  parliament, 
which  had  no  sympathy  with  the  movement.      The  House  of  Commons, 
indeed,  had   little  understanding  of  the  processes  that  were  maturing 
outside   its   walls.       The   industrial  and   the   social  evolution   went  on 
almost  unnoticed  by  statesmen  and  politicians  absorbed  in  the  party 
controversy."  —  Sidney    Low    and    Lloyd    Sanders,    Political    History 
of  England,  1837-1901.     See  also  Hansard's  Parliamentary  Debates  for 
these  years. 


324          Leaders  of  the  People         [1838- 

England  were  not  to  be  cured  save  by  the  people 
of  England.  The  evils  might  be  mitigated  by 
ameliorative  legislation,  but  it  was  not  enough  that 
the  decencies  of  life — then  very  far  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  mass  of  town  and  country  labourers — 
should  be  secured  for  people  ;  the  main  thing 
was  that  people  should  have  freedom  to  work  out 
their  own  industrial  salvation. 

So  in  1846,  Ernest  Jones  plunged  boldly  into 
Chartism.  He  quickly  became  a  leader,  and  his 
reputation  has  endured :  for  Ernest  Jones  was  the 
most  respected,  single-minded,  and  steadfast  of  the 
many  who  sat  in  Chartist  conventions.  Chartism 
for  him  was  the  cry  of  the  uncared-for,  because 
voteless,  multitudes,  and  Ernest  Jones  was  ready  to 
give  his  life  that  the  cry  should  move  the  rulers  of 
the  nation. 

It  was  a  bad  time  for  England  in  1846, 
that  was  plain,1  and  Ernest  Jones,  believing  with 
the  average  Englishman  that  in  politics  lay  the  key 
to  necessary  change,  was  henceforth  a  Chartist 
advocate  and  till  his  death  the  faithful  preacher  of 
democracy.  Without  becoming  a  socialist,  Ernest 
Jones,  in  his  "  Songs  of  Democracy "  and  in  his 
speeches  and  newspaper  writings,  is  clear  that 
political  enfranchisement  was  but  the  high  road  to 
social  and  economic  reform,  that  the  Charter  was 
to  bring  a  better  distribution  of  wealth  as  the 

1  "  The  least  satisfactory  feature  of  English  life  in  1846  was  the 
condition  of  the  labouring-  classes.  Politically  they  were  dumb,  for  they 
had  no  parliamentary  votes.  Socially  they  were  depressed,  though 
their  lot  had  been  considerably  improved  by  an  increased  demand  for 
labour  and  by  the  removal  of  taxes  in  Peel's  great  Budget  of  1842. 
That  was  the  year  in  which  the  misery  of  the  English  proletariat 
reached  its  lowest  depth."  —  Herbert  Paul,  History  of  Modern 
England. 


-1854]  Ernest  Jones  325 

consequence  of  a  better  distribution  of  political 
power.1 

Ernest  Jones  was  twenty-seven  when  he  joined 
the  Chartist  movement.  The  son  of  an  army 
officer  —  who  had  been  equerry  to  the  Duke  of 
Cumberland  —  and  educated  on  the  continent, 
Ernest  Jones'  came  to  England  when  he  was 
nineteen,  and  was  duly  presented  to  Queen  Victoria 
(as  Robert  Owen  had  been)  by  Lord  Melbourne 
in  1841.  He  married  a  Miss  Atherley,  of  Cum- 
berland, and  settled  down  in  London,  writing 
novels,  verses,  and  newspaper  articles.  In  1844 
he  was  called  to  the  Bar,  and  two  years  later 
took  the  step  which  separated  him  from  the  friends 
and  acquaintances  of  his  social  order,  and  placed 
him  on  the  hard  and  strenuous  road  of  the  political 
agitator. 

Averse  from  faction,  realising  the  fatal  folly  of 
internal  jealousies  and  strife,  and  alive  to  the  im- 
portance of  discipline  in  the  army  of  revolt,  Ernest 
Jones  did  his  best  to  work  with  O'Connor — and  was 
naturally  charged  with  cowardice  by  the  Chartists 
who  hated  O'Connor's  supremacy.  In  1847  he 
began  writing  in  the  Northern  Star,  and  was  joint 
editor  with  O'Connor  of  The  Labourer.  His 
"  Songs  of  Democracy  "  were  to  the  Chartists  what 
Ebenezer  Elliott's  "  Corn- Law  Rhymes"  were  to 
the  Free  Traders,  and  his  "  Song  of  the  Lower 

1  Stephens,  a  "hot-headed  "  Chartist  preacher,  put  the  case  as  he,  a 
typical  agitator  of  the  day,  saw  it  in  1839 :  "  The  principle  of  the 
People's  Charter  is  the  right  of  every  man  to  have  his  home,  his  hearth, 
and  his  happiness.  The  question  of  universal  suffrage  is  after  all  a 
knife-and-fork  question.  It  means  that  every  workman  has  a  right  to 
have  a  good  hat  and  coat,  a  g-ood  roof,  a  good  dinner,  no  more  work 
than  will  keep  him  in  health,  and  as  much  wages  as  will  keep  him  in 
plenty." — See  R.  G.  Gamage,  History  of  the  Chartist  Movement. 


326          Leaders  of  the  People         [1838- 

Classes  "  has  retained  a  place  in  the  song-books  of 
social  democrats  to  our  own  day. 

At  the  general  election  of  1847,  when,  to  every- 
body's astonishment,  Feargus  O'Connor  was  elected 
member  for  Nottingham,  Ernest  Jones  stood  for 
Halifax,  but  though  immensely  popular  at  the 
hustings,  he  only  polled  280  votes. 

1848,  the  memorable  year  of  revolutions  abroad, 
saw  Chartism  once  more  a  formidable  movement 
in  England.  An  enormous  petition  was  again 
prepared  for  parliament,  and  the  Chartists  decided 
to  carry  the  petition  to  the  House  of  Commons 
after  a  mass  meeting  on  Kennington  Common  on 
April  loth.  Lord  John  Russell  and  his  Whig 
government  became  thoroughly  alarmed.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington,  as  commander-in-chief,  under- 
took to  guard  the  safety  of  London,  and  garrisoned 
the  city  with  troops,  and  protected  the  bridges, 
while  70,000  special  constables  (of  whom  Prince 
Louis  Napoleon  was  one)  were  quickly  enrolled. 
But  on  the  government  prohibition  of  any  pro- 
cession to  Westminster,  Feargus  O'Connor  at  once 
decided  against  any  collision  between  the  people 
and  the  authorities.  The  mass  meeting  was  held, 
some  50,000  persons  were  present,  and  O'Connor 
and  Ernest  Jones  made  speeches.  Then  the 
petition  was  sent  off  in  a  cab  to  parliament,  and  all 
was  over. 

O'Connor  had  boasted  that  the  monster  petition 
contained  5,000,000  signatures,  but  on  investigation 
it  was  found  that  the  signatures  only  amounted  to 
1,975,496,  and  many  of  these  were  duplicates  and 
forgeries.  Anti-Chartists  had  signed  in  several 
places,  using  ridiculous  names,  like  "  Pugnose," 


-1854]  Ernest  Jones  327 

''Punch,"  and  "Fubbs,"  or  boldly  signing  as 
"Queen  Victoria"  and  "Duke  of  Wellington."1 
Parliament  gladly  took  advantage  of  O'Connor's 
characteristic  exaggeration  to  discredit  the  whole 
movement.  At  the  same  time  the  government 
hastily  prepared  a  bill  to  suppress  the  renewed 
agitation,  and  the  "  Treason  Felony"  bill  was  passed, 
making  "  open  and  advised  speaking  with  seditious 
intent "  a  crime.  This  clause  in  the  act  only  re- 
mained on  the  statute  book  for  two  years,  but  it  was 
sufficient  for  securing  the  conviction  of  all  prominent 
Chartist  speakers. 

Ernest  Jones,  unlike  Feargus  O'Connor,  believed 
that  the  people  should  arm,  and  that  a  display  of 
force  was  necessary  for  carrying  the  Charter.  The 
failure  of  April  loth  strengthened  this  belief,  and 
for  the  next  two  months  he  was  busy  speaking  in 
England  and  Scotland,  urging  the  necessity  for 
enrolling  a  national  guard  and  forming  a  provisional 
government. 

But  in  spite  of  great  public  meetings  the  move- 
ment was  already  breaking  up.  The  Chartist 
Convention,  which  met  in  London  on  May  ist, 
dissolved  on  May  i3th  in  hopeless  disagreement,  and 
Ernest  Jones,  who  had  attended  as  a  member  of 
the  executive  committee,  exclaimed  that  "amid  the 
desertion  of  friends,  and  the  invasion  of  enemies, 
the  fusee  had  been  trampled  out,  and  the  elements 
of  their  energy  were  scattered  to  the  winds  of 
heaven."  Still  he  tried  to  rally  the  broken  ranks, 
and  the  government  decided  that  the  time  had  come 
to  put  the  movement  down  by  means  of  the  new 

1  Charles  Kingsley,  who  is  said  to  have  signed  the  petition,  gives  his 
view  of  April  loth  in  Alton  Locke. 


328          Leaders  of  the  People         [1838- 

"  Treason  Felony  "  Act.  Feargus  O'Connor,  now 
a  member,  was  no  longer  dangerous  to  the  autho- 
rities. His  attendance  in  the  House  kept  him  from 
the  agitation  in  the  country,  and  Ernest  Jones  was 
the  man  to  be  struck  at. 

On  May  29th  and  3Oth  Ernest  Jones  addressed 
great,  but  quite  orderly,  meetings  in  London,  on 
Clerkenwell  Green  and  Bishop  Bonner's  Fields,  and 
then  proceeded  to  Manchester.  Here  he  was  arrested 
and  put  on  trial  with  five  other  Chartists — Fussell, 
Sharpe,  Williams,  Vernon,  and  Looney.  The 
judge  had  little  patience  for  the  prisoners,  and 
Ernest  Jones  was  frequently  interrupted  in  his 
defence.  In  the  end,  he  and  his  fellows  were  all 
found  guilty  of  seditious  speech,  and  Ernest  Jones 
was  sentenced  to  two  years'  imprisonment,  to  find 
sureties,  himself  in  £200  and  two  persons  in  ,£150, 
and  to  keep  the  peace  for  five  years. 

A  number  of  police  spies  procured  many  more 
arrests  and  convictions  by  gaining  admission  to 
Chartist  meetings,  joining  Chartist  unions  and  inciting 
the  members  to  violent  speech  and  an  armed  con- 
spiracy. By  these  means  at  the  end  of  the  year 
1848  the  government  had  succeeded  in  getting  the 
prominent  Chartists  into  prison,  as  it  had  done  in 
1840.  That  Ernest  Jones  exhorted  his  followers  to 
learn  to  bear  arms  is  indisputable  ;  that  the  success 
of  the  revolutionary  movements  on  the  continent 
encouraged  the  belief  amongst  a  certain  number  of 
Chartists  that  an  armed  rising  was  desirable  and 
could  be  successful  in  England  is  equally  true.  But 
as  no  serious  attempt  was  made  in  1848  by  the 
"  physical  force  "  Chartists  to  organize  such  a  rising, 
no  rising  took  place,  and  "  the  conspiracy,"  as  it  was 


-1854]  Ernest  Jones  329 

called,  was  chiefly  the  work  of  the  government's 
police  spies. 

The  riots  at  Newport  and  Birmingham  gave  some 
excuse  to  the  government  for  repression  in  1839-40  ; 
in  1848  no  outbreaks  were  even  threatened  to  justify 
the  sentences  on  Ernest  Jones  and  other  Chartist 
speakers.  The  government's  chief  concern  was  to 
end  the  agitation,  even  if  this  could  only  be  accom- 
plished by  means  of  a  special  act  of  parliament,  and 
the  unsavoury  methods  of  agents  provocateurs.  Lord 
John  Russell  and  his  Whig  colleagues  were  not  the 
men  to  be  kept  from  their  purpose  by  any  nice 
discrimination  in  the  choice  of  weapons.  It  was  not 
the  time,  when  crowns  were  falling  on  the  continent, 
to  hesitate  about  crushing  a  movement  which  seemed 
to  menace  public  safety  in  England.  That  the 
strength  of  Chartism  was  in  the  sober,  law-abiding 
character  of  most  of  its  adherents  the  government 
knew  no  more  than  they  knew  that  the  movement 
was  already  doomed  for  want  of  cohesion. 

The  bitter  hostility  of  the  government  pursued 
Ernest  Jones  in  prison,  and  left  him  to  be  treated  as 
a  common  felon.  Ordered  to  pick  oakum  he  refused, 
and  was  put  on  a  diet  of  bread  and  water.  The 
struggle  between  the  prisoner  and  his  gaolers  was  at 
last  brought  before  the  House  of  Commons,1  and  in 
the  end  Ernest  Jones  was  allowed  to  purchase 
exemption  from  the  allotted  prison  tasks  by  a  small 
payment  of  money. 

On  his  release  from  prison  the  Chartist  movement 
was  flickering  out.  It  was  impossible  to  work  with 
O'Connor,  who,  now  looking  favourably  on  household 
suffrage,  was  already  failing  in  health  and  showing 

1  See  Hansard,  June,  1849. 


330          Leaders  of  the  People         [1838- 

signs  of  the  insanity  which  possessed  him  two  years 
later.  The  trade-union  movement  and  the  co- 
operative store  were  attracting  the  attention  of 
intelligent  workmen,  to  whom  for  the  time  political 
enfranchisement  seemed  a  lost  cause.  Contesting 
Halifax  in  1852,  Ernest  Jones  only  polled  52  votes, 
and  the  People  s  Paper,  which  he  started  in  that 
year  and  edited,  never  had  the  success  of  the 
Northern  Star. 

Feargus  O'Connor  was  led  away  from  the  House 
of  Commons  hopelessly  insane,  to  die  in  1855,  and 
Chartism  utterly  disintegrated  could  not  be  revived 
by  Ernest  Jones.  In  1854  the  movement  was 
extinct,  and  from  that  time  till  his  death  Ernest 
Jones  gave  his  political  support  to  the  advanced 
Radicals.  He  contested  Nottingham  in  1853  and 
1857,  but  without  success,  returned  to  his  old 
practice  at  the  Bar,  and  wrote  novels  and  poems. 
In  1868,  the  year  of  household  suffrage  in  the  towns, 
he  was  adopted  by  the  Radicals  as  parliamentary 
candidate  for  Manchester,  and  then  on  January  26, 
1869,  came  a  sudden  failure  of  the  heart,  and  death 
ended  all  earthly  hopes  and  plans  for  Ernest  Jones. 
He  was  just  fifty  when  he  died,  and  though  Chartism 
had  passed  away,  Ernest  Jones  had  not  outlived  his 
usefulness  or  his  popularity  with  all  those  who  be- 
lieved in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  democracy,  and  he 
had  gained  the  respect  of  many  earlier  foes. 

The  People's  Charter  remains  unfulfilled,  but  two 
of  its  points  have  long  been  granted — the  ballot, 
and  the  abolition  of  a  property  qualification  for 
members  of  parliament.  Annual  parliaments  are  no 
longer  desired  by  any  section  of  political  reformers, 
the  extension  of  the  franchise  to  the  agricultural 


-1854]  Ernest  Jones  331 

labourer  in  1884  brought  manhood  suffrage  appre- 
ciably nearer,  equal  electoral  districts  were  never 
more  than  a  plan  of  quite  reasonable  political 
theorists,  and  the  demand  for  payment  of  members, 
never  altogether  dropped  by  Radicals,  is  once  more 
heard  in  the  land. 

The  great  contention  of  Ernest  Jones  and  the 
Chartists  that  political  liberty  should  precede  the 
granting  of  reforms  by  parliament,  that  the  people 
should  have  the  power  to  control  and  direct  the 
deliberations  of  parliaments  still  has  its  advocates  ; 
but  government  is  passing — almost  unnoticed — once 
more  into  the  hands  of  an  executive,  for  that  "  eternal 
vigilance  "  which  is  the  price  of  political  liberty  is 
oftentimes  relaxed. 


Conclusion 


CONCLUSION 


I 


political    movements   may    be    noted 
to-day  in  Great  Britain  by  all  who  are 
interested    in  such  things  :    the   Labour 
movement  and  the  Women's  movement 
for  political  enfranchisement. 

The  efforts  of  the  past  twenty-five  years  to 
establish  a  separate  socialist  party  in  parliament 
have  not  been  directly  successful,  but  the  Labour 
Party  has  managed  to  return  a  group  of  some  thirty 
workmen  to  the  House  of  Commons,  and  these 
men  are  the  responsible  and  trusted  leaders  of  the 
trade-unions  and  the  Independent  Labour  Party. 
Without  requiring  any  formal  acknowledgment  of 
socialist  belief,  the  Labour  Party  is  largely  inspired 
by  socialist  teaching,  and  its  goal  is  the  conquest 
of  government  by  the  labouring  people,  and  a 
more  even  distribution  of  wealth  by  the  gradual 
expropriation  of  the  landlord  and  the  capitalist. 
While  adhering  strictly  to  constitutional  methods  of 
agitation,  giving  full  respect  to  the  procedure  of 
parliament  and  the  legal  conduct  of  elections,  the 
leaders  of  the  Labour  Party,  in  their  speeches  at 
public  meetings,  use  much  of  the  old  revolutionary 
talk  of  John  Ball  and  Robert  Ket,  and  the  argu- 
ments of  Winstanley  for  the  popular  ownership  of 
the  land.  To  the  Labour  Party  as  to  the  Chartists 
democratic  politics  are  but  a  stepping-stone  to  social 
reform,  and  as  in  the  days  of  the  Chartists  the 

335 


336          Leaders  of  the  People 

strength  of  the  Labour  Party  is  in  the  industrial 
districts  of  the  North  of  England,  and  in  South 
Wales. 

The  Women's  movement,  on  the  other  hand,  while 
demanding  nothing  but  the  right  to  the  franchise, 
and  claiming  this  right  to  a  voice  in  the  affairs  of 
the  State  on  the  old  constitutional  ground  of  Pym 
and  Hampden — that  those  who  pay  direct  taxation 
to  the  government  must  have  some  political  control 
of  the  expenditure — boldly  avows  in  the  face  of 
government  refusal  the  necessity  for  revolutionary 
methods  to  acquire  the  franchise.  More  than  600 
women  have  gone  to  prison  in  the  last  four  years  in 
the  cause  of  Women's  Suffrage,  and  the  methods 
adopted  have  startled  the  public,  created  an  enthu- 
siasm, and  generally  aroused  the  attention  of  a 
formerly  indifferent  parliament  to  the  claim  of 
women  to  political  enfranchisement. 

Mary  Wollstonecraft,  in  her  Vindication  of  the 
Rights  of  Women,  published  in  1792,  struck  the 
first  note  of  this  movement.  In  the  latter  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century  it  received  the  support  of 
John  Stuart  Mill  and  a  certain  number  of  parlia- 
mentary radicals,  and  Women's  Suffrage  societies 
were  formed.  Then,  five  years  ago,  the  Women's 
Social  and  Political  Union  was  started  at  Manchester 
by  Mrs.  Pankhurst  and  her  daughter  Miss  Christabel 
Pankhurst,  and  the  extraordinary  energy  and  activity 
of  this  union  and  the  daring  and  resource  of  its 
members  have  made  the  women's  demand  for  the 
vote  a  vital  question  in  politics. 

Both  these  movements — the  agitation  of  the 
Labour  Party  for  a  fuller  and  more  abundant  life 
for  wage-earners,  and  the  agitation  of  the  women 


Conclusion  337 

for  political  enfranchisement  are  proceeding  in  our 
midst — a  guarantee  that  the  centuries  of  struggle 
for  freedom  are  not  fruitless. 

"  The  battle  of  freedom  is  never  done  and  the 
field  never  quiet,"  and  while  ever  sun  and  moon 
endure  and  man  seeks  to  dominate  his  neighbour,  so 
long  in  England  shall  men  and  women  be  found  to 
resist  such  dominance.  For  "to  meet  such  troubles 
and  overcome  them,  or  to  die  in  strife  with  them — 
this  is  a  great  part  of  a  man's  life." 

THE  END. 


INDEX 


ADAM  OF  MARSH,  Franciscan  friar, 
friend  of  Grosseteste  and  de 
Montfort,  1 20,  130 

Aldrich,  an  Alderman  of  Norwich, 
229,  231 

Alexander  III.,  Pope,  45,  56 

Anselm,  Abbot  of  Bee,  8  ;  called  to 
court  of  William  II.,  8 ;  ap- 
pointed Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, 9  ;  refuses  to  give  up  church 
lands,  1 1  ;  firm  attitude  at  Council 
of  Rockingham,  15  ;  semblance 
of  peace  with  the  king,  16; 
leaves  England,  18 ;  returns  at 
request  of  Henry  I.,  19;  his  ser- 
vices to  the  king,  21;  dispute 
with  the  king,  23  ;  reconciliation, 
26  ;  his  death  and  character, 
27-30  ;  his  birthplace,  30 

Appleton,  William,  161 

Ayscough,  Bishop  of  Salisbury, 
impeached  for  treason,  174; 
murdered  at  Erdington,  175 


BAILEY,  JOHN,  hanged  by  Cade,  184 

Ball,  John,  itinerant  priest  from 
York,  preaches  social  revolution, 
143 ;  released  from  Maidstone 
prison  by  Wat  Tyler,  153 ; 
preaches  to  Tyler's  followers  at 
Blackheath,  153 ;  hanged  as  a 
rebel,  167 

Barton,  Elizabeth,  "Holy  Maid  of 
Kent,"  206 

Becket,  Thomas,  his  parentage, 
33 ;  early  years,  34 ;  appointed 
Chancellor  of  Canterbury,  34 ; 
ordained  priest  and  appointed  to 
Archbishopric,  38  ;  dispute  with 
the  king,  41-45 ;  yields  to  king's 
demands  at  Council  of  Claren- 
don, 47  ;  refutes  charges  at 
Council  of  Northampton,  49  ; 
leaves  England  and  appeals  to 


the  pope,  55  ;  reconciliation  with 
the  king,  57  ;  lands  at  Sandwich, 
57 ;  ill-will  of  the  bishops,  58 ; 
Henry's  sudden  rage,  59 ;  his 
murder,  63  ;  his  canonisation,  64 

Belknap,  Chief  Justice,  147,  148 

Berksted,  Stephen,  Bishop  of 
Chichester,  128 

Bigod,  Hugh  of  Norfolk,  121 

Bigod,  Roger,  126 

Boniface  of  Savoy,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  no,  131 

Bradshaw,  John,  297 

Buckingham,  Duke  of,  249,  250, 
251,  252 

Burdett,  Sir  Francis,  313 

Burley,  Sir  Simon,  148,  163 


CADE,  JACK,  leader  of  the  revolt  of 
Kentish  commons,  1450,  173  ; 
uncertainty  as  to  real  name  and 
family,  176;  marches  to  Black- 
heath  at  head  of  46,000  followers, 
177  ;  draws  up  and  presents  peti- 
tion to  Henry  VI.,  178  ;  no 
answer  returned,  178  ;  withdraws 
to  Sevenoaks  and  defeats  small 
body  of  Henry's  troops,  180; 
gathers  reinforcements  in  Kent, 
181  ;  Henry  VI.  treats  with  him 
fruitlessly,  181  ;  enters  London 
without  opposition,  182 ;  pre- 
serves strict  discipline  in  his 
force,  184 ;  forced  to  levy  toll 
for  support  of  his  followers,  185  ; 
after  first  good  reception  London 
turns  against  him,  187  ;  unsuc- 
cessful fight  for  London  Bridge, 
187  ;  treats  with  Henry's  repre- 
sentatives, 1 88 ;  many  of  his 
adherents  return  to  their  homes, 
189  ;  refuses  to  lay  down  arms 
till  parliament  issues  legal  par- 
don, 189 ;  proclaimed  a  traitor, 


339 


34° 


Index 


189  ;  defeated  at  Queenborough, 
189;  dies  fighting  as  a  fugitive, 
in  Sussex,  189;  head  exposed 
on  London  Bridge,  190 

Cartwright,  John,  enters  Navy 
and  begins  promising  career, 
308 ;  it  is  cut  short  by  his 
siding  with  the  Americans  at 
outbreak  of  war,  1776,  308; 
trains  the  Nottinghamshire 
Militia,  309  ;  pioneer  of  political 
reform,  310 ;  writes  and  speaks 
on  the  subject,  310  ;  unsuccessful 
efforts  to  enter  parliament,  312; 
at  age  of  80  charged  with  sedi- 
tion and  fined,  313 ;  known  as 
"  Father  of  Reform,"  315 

Catherine  of  Aragon,  203 

Cantilupe,  Bishop  of  Worcester, 
122,  126,  133 

Cantilupe,  Thomas,  Chancellor,  128 

Cave,  Robert,  148 

Chalton,  Sir  John,  Lord  Mayor  of 
London,  183 

Charles  I.,  250  et  seq,  280,  282 

Church,  Corporal,  286 

Clarendon,  Earl  of  (quoted),  262 

Clarendon,  Council  of,  46 

Clarkson,  Thomas,  313 

Cocke  (or  Cooke)  Thomas,  friend 
to  both  Henry  VI.  and  Cade,  182 

Cod,  Thomas,  Mayor  of  Norwich, 
228,  229,  231,  232,  233 

Coke,  Lord  Justice,  252 

Colet,  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  199,  212 

Conyers,  Dr.,  Vicar  of  St.  Martin, 
Norwich,  231 

Cranmer,  Archbishop,  204 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  279  et  seq. 

Cromwell,  Thomas,  208 
Crowmer,    Sheriff    of    Kent,    180; 
arrested  and  sent  to  Tower,  181  ; 
beheaded  by  Cade's  orders,  184 
Curtis  (Girste,    or    Ghirstis)    City 
Merchant,  186 

DE  BURGH,  HUBERT,  95,  107 

De  Gray,  John,  Bishop  of  Nor- 
wich, 81,  82 

De  Morville,  Hugh,  59-63 

Derby,  Henry,  Earl  of  (afterwards 
Henry  IV.),  157,  163,  170 


Despenser,  Henry,  Bishop  of  Nor- 
wich, 168 

Des  Roches,  Peter,  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, 82,  94,  107,  108 

De  Tracy,  William,  59-63 

De  Valence,  William,    123,132 


EADMER  (quoted),  6,  7,  14,  17,  26 
Edward,  Prince,  son  of  Henry  1 1 1., 
afterwards  King  Edward  I.  ; 
takes  oath  of  reform  to  barons, 
123;  takes  Gloucester  in  civil 
war,  126 ;  taken  prisoner  at 
Battle  of  Lewes,  127  ;  escapes 
to  Welsh  marshes,  132;  inter- 
cepts de  Montfort's  relief  force 
at  Evesham,  133 

Eliot,  John,  enters  parliament  as 
member  for  St.  Germans,  249; 
knighted  and  becomes  Vice- 
Admiral  of  Devon,  249  ;  captures 
the  pirate  Nutt,  but  eventually 
finds  himself  in  Marshalsea 
prison  over  the  affair,  250 ;  re- 
leased and  is  returned  for  New- 
port, 1624,  250 ;  quarrels  with 
Buckingham  and  insists  upon  his 
impeachment,  251  ;  imprisoned  in 
Tower  in  connection  therewith, 
but  soon  released,  251;  refuses 
forced  loan  and  again  imprisoned 
and  deprived  of  Vice-Admiral- 
ship,  252;  carries  Petition  of 
Right,  252 ;  attacks  policy  of 
Laud,  252  ;  supports  John  Rolle 
in  refusing  payment  of  taxes, 
253 ;  summoned  before  Privy 
Council,  imprisoned  for  fourth 
time,  and  fined,  255  ;  remains 
passionately  loyal  to  House  of 
Commons,  256  ;  health  gives  way 
in  confinement,  257  ;  dies  in  the 
Tower,  1632,  257  ;  his  son's 
appeal  for  his  burial  at  Port  Eliot, 
Cornwall,  refused,  257 
Erasmus,  193,  194,  i96»  J97>  2O2» 

211,  212 

Essex,  Earl  of,  267 
Ethelmar,  half-brother  to  Henry  III. , 

r  06 
Everard,  297,  298 


Index 


FAIRFAX,  General,  298,  299 

Falkland,  Lord,  265,  266 

Finch,  Chief  Justice,  262 

Fisher,  Bishop  of  Rochester,  206, 
207,  208 

FitzOsbert,  William,  called  Long- 
beard  ;  his  early  life,  72  ;  lays 
his  grievances  before  Richard  I., 
72 ;  defies  Archbishop  Hubert, 
73  ;  his  arrest  and  death,  75 

FitzStephen,  W.  (quoted),  35,  49, 
53.  59 

Fitzurse,  Reginald,  59-63 

Flowerdew,  Sergeant,  222,  223 

Frost,  321 

Fulke,  follower  of  Ket,  235 

Fussell,  328 


GILBERT,  Earl  of  Gloucester,   126, 

128,  131,  132 
Gough,  Matthew,  186 
Green,  J.  R.  (quoted),  91,  92 
Green,  Squire  of  Wylby,  222 
Gregory   IX.,  Pope,  letter  to,  from 

Grosseteste,  102 

Grindcobbe,  William,  supporter  of 
John  Ball  in  Hertford,  143,  146  ; 
follows  Wat  Tyler,  149  ;  at  Mile 
End,  159  ;  hanged  at  St.  Albans, 
167 

Grosseteste,  Bishop  of  Lincoln, 
born  in  Suffolk  of  humble  parent- 
age, goes  to  Oxford,  rises  to 
foremost  honours  there,  and 
becomes  bishop,  at  sixty,  101  ; 
institutes  reforms  at  Oxford,  102 ; 
befriends  Dominican  and  Fran- 
ciscan friars,  102  ;  withstands 
Henry  III.'s  rapacity,  104  ; 
attends  council  in  London, 
recites  grievances  of  Henry  III.'s 
misrule,  107 ;  resists  seizure  of 
English  Church  revenues  by 
Innocent  IV.,  108-111  ;  refuses 
canonry  of  Lincoln  to  pope's 
nephew,  in  ;  Cardinals  uphold 
Grosseteste  against  Innocent  IV., 
112;  makes  appeal  to  whole  realm 
on  behalf  of  rights  of  English 
Church,  113;  dies,  1235,  and  is 
buried  in  Lincoln  Cathedral,  113  ; 


Edward  I. 's  application  for  canon- 
ization refused,  113 
Gunnell,     Tutor     in    Sir     Thomas 
More's  family,  199 


HALES,  Sir  ROBERT,  Treasurer  to 
Richard  II.,  146;  advises  no 
conference  with  Tyler's  followers, 
154 ;  beheaded  on  Tower  Hill, 
1 60 

Hampden,  John,  refuses  to  pay 
ship-money,  258  ;  case  decided 
against  him,  259  ;  acts  with  Eliot 
against  Buckingham,  261  ;  strong 
influence  in  House  of  Commons, 
262  ;  prominent  work  in  Long 
Parliament,  263  ;  impeached  for 
high  treason,  265  ;  takes  refuge 
from  Charles  in  city,  266  ;  pre- 
pares for  war,  266  ;  raises  regi- 
ment of  infantry  in  Bucks,  267  ; 
mortally  wounded  at  Chalgrove, 
268 

Hazlerig,  265,  288 

Henry  I.,  19-26 

Henry  II.  ;  appoints  Thomas 
Becket  Chancellor  of  England, 
34 ;  their  close  friendship,  35  ; 
determines  to  appoint  Thomas 
to  the  archbishopric,  36 ;  his 
dispute  with  Thomas,  and  its 
cause,  41  ;  draws  up  the  Constitu- 
tions of  Clarendon,  46 ;  his  dis- 
satisfaction with  the  result,  48  ; 
charges  Thomas  with  corrupt 
practices,  48-54 ;  his  sudden 
rage  and  hasty  words,  resulting 
in  the  murder  of  the  archbishop, 

63 

Henry  III.;  appeals  for  money  at 
Council  of  Westminster,  1244, 
104  ;  confronts  bishops  with  Inno- 
cent IV.'s  letter  exhorting  them 
to  give  liberally,  104  ;  bishops 
evade  coercion,  105  ;  king  again 
tries  in  1252,  106 ;  bishops,  led 
by  Grosseteste,  refuse,  106 ;  his 
miserable  misrule,  108  ;  dealings 
with  Simon  of  Montfort  in  Gas- 
cony,  118-120;  his  financial  diffi- 
culties reach  climax,  1257,  120; 


342 


Index 


continued  quarrels  with  barons, 
122 ;  obtains  dispensation  from 
promises  to  barons,  124 ;  civil 
war  is  declared,  126;  defeated 
by  Simon  of  Montfort,  and  peace 
made,  1264,  127;  war  again 
breaks  out,  132  ;  is  victorious, 

137 
Henry    VIII.,    197,    201,    202,   203, 

207,  208 

Holland,  Sir  John,  159 
Holies,  265 
Home,  Alderman,  182 
Home,  Alderman,  supports  Tyler, 

and   welcomes   him   to    London, 

156 

Hotham,  Sir  John,  267 
Howe,  Lord,  308 
Hugh  of  Lincoln,  77 
Herbert  of  Bosham  (quoted),  38,  58 

IDEN,  ALEXANDER,  189,  190 
Innocent  III.,  Pope,  77,  81,  83,  95 
Innocent  IV.,  Pope,   104,  106,  no, 

in,  113 

Ireton,  General,  280,  286 
Islip,    Archbishop   of    Canterbury, 

144 


JOHN,  KING,  refuses  to  acknow- 
ledge Stephen  Langton's  ap- 
pointment to  archbishopric,  81  ; 
seizes  estates  of  Canterbury,  and 
drives  chapter  into  exile,  82  ;  is 
excommunicated,  83  ;  meets  pri- 
mate at  Winchester  and  is 
formally  absolved,  85 ;  strife 
with  barons,  86  ;  his  campaign 
to  recover  lost  Angevine  pro- 
vinces, 87  ;  capitulation  to  the 
barons,  90 ;  signs  the  Great 
Charter,  91  ;  his  death,  95 

John  of  Gaunt,  calls  parliament  at 
Northampton,  147 ;  his  unpopu- 
larity with  the  people,  151  ;  his 
palace  of  the  Savoy  and  its  valu- 
able contents  destroyed,  157 

John  of  Salisbury  (quoted),  56 

Jones,  Ernest,  324  ;  joins  Chartist 
movement  at  27,  325  ;  son  of  an 
officer  and  educated  abroad,  325 ; 


works  with  Feargus  O'Connor, 
325;  attends  Chartist  convention, 
327 ;  addresses  large  meetings  in 
London,  328 ;  arrested,  tried, 
found  guilty  of  seditious  speech 
and  imprisoned,  328 ;  on  his 
release  Chartist  movement  de- 
clining, 329 ;  contests  Halifax 
unsuccessfully,  330 ;  gives  sup- 
port to  advanced  radicals,  330  ; 
stands  twice  unsuccessfully  for 
Nottingham,  330  ;  dies  suddenly 
at  the  age  of  50,  330 


KEMP,  Cardinal,  Archbishop  of 
York,  Chancellor  to  Henry  VI., 
187,  1 88,  190 

Kent,  Earl  of,  159 

Ket,  Robert,  landowner  in  Norfolk, 
a  tanner  by  trade,  223 ;  sym- 
pathies on  the  side  of  the  people, 
223 ;  offers  to  lead  the  movement 
against  enclosures  of  land,  224  ; 
he  is  eagerly  accepted  as  captain, 
and  leads  large  army  towards 
Norwich,  224  ;  issues  manifesto 
attacking  landlords,  225  ;  ad- 
vances to  Mousehold,  and  his 
force  increases  to  20,000,  228 ; 
sends  statement  to  Edward  VI., 
229  ;  king  replies  by  herald,  229  ; 
sets  about  organising  and  victual- 
ling his  followers,  as  he  is  not 
content  with  vague  promises, 
230 ;  arrests  landowners,  231  ; 
repudiates  king's  "  pardon  "  as 
being  a  just  and  innocent  man, 
232  ;  his  arrest  ordered  by  king's 
messenger,  but  impossible  in  the 
presence  of  his  followers,  232  ; 
friction  arises  between  Norwich 
authorities  and  the  rebels,  232  ; 
fight  ensues,  Norwich  in  his 
hands,  233;  unsuccessfully  op- 
posed by  Marquis  of  Northamp- 
ton, 234  ;  commands  in  Norwich 
for  three  weeks,  235;  disappointed 
at  rising  not  becoming  general, 
236  ;  negotiates  with  Earl  of 
Warwick,  sent  to  suppress  revolt, 
237;  abrupt  conclusion,  and  battle 


Index 


343 


follows,  238  ;  his  mistaken  tactics 
and  defeat,  239  ;  his  followers 
surrender  to  Warwick,  239  ;  his 
flight  and  capture,  239  ;  tried, 
found  guilty  of  high  treason 
and  condemned  to  death,  241  ; 
hanged  in  chains  in  Norwich,  241 

Ket,  William,  223,  239,  240,  241 

Knolles,  Sir  Robert,  156 

Knyvett,  Sir  Edmund,  236 


LANGHAM,  SIMON,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  144 

Langland,  Robert,  145 

Langton,  Stephen,  appointed  to 
archbishopric  of  Canterbury 
against  King  John's  wishes  by 
Innocent  III.,  81,  82  ;  is  driven 
into  exile  by  the  king,  82 ;  returns 
six  years  later,  85 ;  starts  the 
movement  for  the  Great  Charter, 
86 ;  frames  articles  for  the  Char- 
ter, 90  ;  disagreement  with  papal 
legate,  94 ;  works  for  preservation 
of  peace  during  early  years  of 
Henry  III.'s  reign,  95  ;  his  char- 
acter and  place  in  history,  96 

Laud,  Archbishop,  252,  253,  256, 
257,  260,  262,  272 

Legge,  John,  147,  160 

le  Despencer,  Hugh,  Justiciar,  126, 
128,  134 

Lilburne,  John,  apprenticed  to  a 
cloth  merchant  in  London  and 
becomes  friend  of  Prynne,  278  ; 
charged  before  Star  Chamber 
with  circulating  unlicensed  books, 
and  sentenced  to  be  whipped, 
pilloried,  and  imprisoned,  278 ; 
released  by  order  of  Long  Parlia- 
ment, 278  ;  fights  at  Edgehill  and 
Marston  Moor,  where  he  is  taken 
prisoner,  278 ;  leaves  army  in 
1645  rather  than  take  the  Coven- 
ant, 279 ;  resists  the  tyranny  of 
parliamentary  government,  279; 
heads  the  party  in  the  army 
called  the  Levellers,  281  ;  again 
imprisoned  and  released  in  1649, 
282 ;  writes  pamphlets  against 
the  government  and  is  again 


imprisoned,  284 ;  petition  pre- 
sented to  parliament  for  his  re- 
lease, 284;  tried  for  treasonable 
writings,  287 ;  fined  and  banished, 
288 ;  goes  to  Holland,  and  returns, 
without  permission,  to  London, 
in  1653,  289 ;  arrested  and  ac- 
quitted, 289 ;  again  imprisoned 
by  Cromwell  for  two  years,  290  ; 
converted  to  Quakerism,  290; 
released  and  pensioned,  290  ;  dies 
at  Eltham,  290 

Litster,  Geoffrey,  follower  of  John 
Ball  in  Norfolk,  143,  146  ;  his 
death,  168,  217 

Looney,  328 

Lovett,  319,  322 

Luard  (quoted),  101-2 

Lyons,  Richard,  161 


MACAULAY,  LORD  (quoted),  264 

Malpas,  Philip,  185 

Martin,  Papal  Legate,  no 

Matthew  of  Westminster  (quoted), 
127 

Maurice,  C.  E.  (quoted),  95 

Mendall,  John,  a  name  by  which 
Jack  Cade  was  known,  175 

Moleyns,  Bishop  of  Chichester,  sup- 
porter of  Duke  of  Suffolk,  killed 
at  Portsmouth,  174 

Montfort,  Henry  of,  eldest  son  of 
Earl  of  Leicester,  133,  134 

Montfort,  Simon  of,  second  son  of 
Earl  of  Leicester,  132,  133 

Montfort,  Simon  of,  Earl  of 
Leicester,  son  of  first  Earl  of 
Leicester,  marries  Eleanor,  sister 
of  Henry  III.,  and  widow  of 
Earl  of  Pembroke,  117;  boyhood 
passed  in  France,  117  ;  leaves  for 
crusades,  distinguished  career  in 
Palestine,  n8  ;  returns  in  1242, 
r  18  ;  works  with  Grosseteste  in 
his  reforms,  1 18 ;  goes  to  Gascony 
for  five  years  (1248-53)  and  deals 
with  turbulent  nobles,  118  ;  saves 
Gascony  for  English  crown,  and 
restores  order  in  the  province,  119; 
Henry  III.'s  ingratitude,  1 19 ; 
recognized  leader  of  the  barons 


344 


Index 


on  his  return  to  England,  120; 
successful  in  "  Mad  Parliament," 
1258,  122  ;  as  "  foreigner  "  yields 
castles  of  Kenilworth  and  Odi- 
ham,  123  ;  fresh  difficulties  with 
Henry  III.  in  carrying  out  Pro- 
visions of  Oxford,  124  ;  civil  war 
imminent,  1264;  and  many  bishops 
and  barons  desert  Simon,  125  ; 
offers  ^30,000  to  king  to  make 
peace  and  adhere  to  Provisions 
of  Oxford  —  proposal  rejected, 
126;  Battle  of  Lewes  won  by 
Simon,  126  ;  peace  made,  127  ; 
draws  up  new  scheme  of  reform, 
the  precursor  of  later  representa- 
tive government,  129  ;  fresh  dis- 
turbances and  defections,  fol- 
lowed by  renewal  of  war,  132  ; 
Battle  of  Evesham,  and  death  of 
Simon,  134  ;  interred  in  Evesham 
Abbey,  134 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  born  1478, 
member  of  Cardinal  Morton's 
household,  leaves  there  for  Ox- 
ford, and  later  studies  law  in 
Lincoln's  Inn,  193 ;  friendship 
with  Erasmus,  194 ;  spends  four 
years  with  Carthusians,  195  ; 
leaves  Charterhouse,  marries 
and  enters  parliament,  195  ; 
opposes  Henry  VII. 's  exactions, 
195  ;  Under-Sheriff  for  the  City, 
196 ;  embassies  to  Flanders  and 
Calais,  197  ;  enters  Henry  VIII. 's 
service,  and  rises  rapidly  to 
highest  offices  of  State,  197 ; 
happy  domestic  life,  198  ;  with- 
holds support  from  king  on  his 
divorce  from  Catherine  of  Ara- 
gon,  203  ;  resigns  chancellorship, 
205  ;  declines  to  be  present  at 
Anne  Boleyn's  coronation,  206 ; 
unsuccessful  attempt  to  implicate 
him  in  the  "treason"  of  Holy 
Maid  of  Kent,  206  ;  finds  himself 
unable  to  take  oath  denying 
papal  supremacy,  and  is  sent 
to  Tower,  207  ;  indicted  for 
treason,  208  ;  sentenced  to  death, 
209 ;  beheaded  on  Tower  Hill, 
210  ;  beatified,  213 


Mortimer,  name  by  which  Jack  Cade 

was  popularly  known,  176 
Mortimer,  Roger,  132 


NEWTON,   SIR   JOHN,   Governor  of 
Rochester  Castle,  taken  prisoner 
by  Tyler,  149;  sent  with  message 
from  Tyler  to  the  king,  154 
Nicholas,  papal  legate,  86 
Norfolk,  Duke  of,  202 
Northampton,  Council  of,  48 
Northampton,  Marquis  of  (William 
Parr),  234 


OASTLER,  323 

O'Brien,  James  Bronterre,  320,  321, 

322 
O'Connor,   Feargus,  320,  323,  329, 

330 

Otho,  papal  legate,  109,  no 
Overton,  Richard,  284 


PALGRAVE,  SIR  FRANCIS  (quoted), 
22,  23 

Pandulf,  papal  legate,  83,  94 

Pankhurst,  Mrs.,  336 

Pankhurst,  Christabel,  336 

Paris,  Matthew  (quoted),  100,  105, 
108,  113,  117, 124 

Parker,  Matthew,  afterwards  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury.  23  r,  232 

Perkins,  Corporal,  286 

Petibone,  John,  232 

Place,  Francis,  314,  319,  320 

Powell,    Professor   York    (quoted), 

3°.  65>  9»»  I2I>  !35 

Prince,  284 

Pym,  John,  enters  House  of  Com- 
mons, 1614,  260 ;  conspicuous  in 
"Short  Parliament,"  260;  sup- 
ports Eliot  in  Buckingham's  im- 
peachment, 261  ;  becomes  leader 
of  parliamentary  party,  261  ;  can- 
vasses England  on  horseback 
before  "  Long  Parliament,"  261  ; 
opens  charge  of  impeachment 
against  Strafford,  262 ;  active 
work  in  parliament,  263,  264 ; 
makes  overtures  to  the  queen, 


Index 


345 


263 ;  impeached  for  high  trea- 
son, 265 ;  takes  refuge  in  city 
from  Charles,  266  ;  secures  Ports- 
mouth and  Hull  for  the  parlia- 
ment, 266  ;  his  "solemn  league 
and  covenant"  accepted  by  par- 
liament, 269  ;  dies,  1643,  and 
buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  269 

RICH,  EDMUND,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  106  ;  retires  to  Pon- 
tigny,  1240,  and  dies,  109 

Richard  II.,  agrees  to  interview 
with  Tyler,  154  ;  allows  himself 
to  be  dissuaded,  155;  sends  to 
Tyler  for  written  statement  of 
grievances,  157 ;  agrees  to  a 
meeting  at  Mile  End,  159 ;  assents 
to  Tyler's  requests,  160 ;  second 
meeting  at  Smithfield,  162  ;  again 
agrees  to  Tyler's  demands,  164  ; 
after  Tyler's  death  personally 
disperses  his  followers,  166  ;  the 
danger  passed,  rebels  fiercely 
punished,  167 ;  formally  annuls 
charters  granted  to  Tyler,  168 ; 
his  death,  170 

Richard  the  Breton,  59-63 

Richard,  Earl  of  Cornwall,  half 
brother  to  Henry  III.,  became 
King  of  the  Romans,  n8 

Richard,  Earl  of  Gloucester,  121, 
122,  124 

Rishanger,  Chronicler  for  St. 
Albans  (quoted),  121,  134 

Rockingham,  Council  of,  13,  15 

Roger  of  Wendover  (quoted),  88 

Roper,  William,  son-in-law  to  Sir 
Thomas  More,  195,  196,  202 

Roper,  Margaret  (his  wife),  198 

Russell,  Lord  John,  321,  326,  329 


SADLER,  323 

Salisbury,  Earl  of,  counsels  Richard 
II.  not  to  interview  Tyler,  155 ; 
at  Smithfield,  163  ;  his  death,  170 

Sanders,  Henry,  297 

Say-and-Sele,  Lord,  treasurer  to 
Henry  VI.,  impeached  for  trea- 
son, 174  ;  arrested  and  taken  to 


Tower,  181  ;  beheaded  by  Cade's 
order,  184 

Scales,  Lord,  guardian  of  prisoners 
in  Tower,  182 ;  in  conjunction 
with  mayor  and  corporation 
opposes  Cade,  186 

Seldon,  252 

Shaftesbury,  Lord,  323 

Sharpe,  328 

Sheffield,  Lord,  234 

Sibley,  Alderman,  156 

Somerset,  Protector,  221,  236 

Stafford,  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, Chancellor  to  Henry  VI., 
181,  187,  188 

Stafford,  Sir  Humfrey,  180 

Stafford,  Sir  William,  180 

Standish,  Ralph,  165,  166 

Steward,  Augustine,  234,  235 

Strafford,  Earl  of,  252,  256,  262,  263 

Straw,  Jack,  priest  in  Essex,  fol- 
lower of  John  Ball,  143  ;  acts  as 
lieutenant  to  Wat  Tyler,  149 ; 
hanged  without  trial,  167 

Strode,  265 

Sudbury,  Simon,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  144  ;  his  palace  at 
Canterbury  ransacked  by  Tyler, 
152  ;  Lambeth  palace  stormed  by 
Tyler  and  records  destroyed,  but 
building  uninjured,  156;  beheaded 
by  Tyler,  on  Tower  Hill,  161 

Suffolk,  Duke  of,  chief  minister  to 
Henry  VI.,  173  ;  impeached  as  a 
traitor,  174;  beheaded,  174 

Suffolk,  Earl  of,  President  of  Rich- 
ard II.'s  council,  155,  163,  167, 
170 

Sutherton,  Leonard,  232 


TONGE,  Alderman,  156 

Theobald,  Archbishop,  33,  34,  36 

Thompson,  Corporal  William,  285 

Thompson,  Cornet,  286 

Tressilian,  Sir  Robert,  167,  170 

Tyler,  John,  148,  149 

Tyler,  Wat,  chosen  captain  of 
peasants  at  Maidstone,  149 ;  his 
recorded  history  can  be  followed 
for  eight  days  only,  150 ;  his 
followers  at  first  moderate,  151  ; 

24 


34-6 


Index 


at  Canterbury,  152  ;  bursts  open 
gaol  at  Maidstone  and  releases 
Ball  and  other  prisoners,  153  ; 
sets  out  for  London  at  head  of 
30,000  men,  153  ;  encamps  at 
Blackheath,  153  ;  sends  Sir  John 
Newton  with  message  to  Rich- 
ard II.,  154;  interview  refused, 
155 ;  he  marches  on  London 
Bridge,  and  destroys  adjacent 
property,  155;  keeps  his  followers 
under  strict  discipline,  156;  de- 
mands interview  with  the  king, 
158  :  conference  at  Mile  End, 
159,  160  ;  invites  king  to  meet 
him  again,  at  Smithfield,  162;  his 
demands  agreed  to,  164 :  in 
sudden  scuffle  draws  dagger, 
strikes  Walworth,  and  is 
mortally  wounded  in  return, 
165  ;  his  head  exposed  on  London 
Bridge,  166 

URBAN,  Pope,  18,  19 

VERNON,  328 
Vincent,  321 
Von  Hutten,  Ulrich,  193 

WARWICK,  Earl  of,  High  Chamber- 
lain to  Henry  VIII.,  236-240 

Walter,  Hubert,  Bishop  of  Salis- 
bury, afterwards  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  69,  70,  73,  76,  77,  81 

Walter  of  Coventry  (quoted),  85 

Walworth,  William,  Mayor  of  Lon- 
don, owns  London  houses  of  ill- 
fame,  155 ;  the  same  destroyed 
by  Tyler,  155;  attempts  to 
fortify  London  Bridge,  155 ; 
urges  king  and  council  to  action, 
157  ;  at  Smithfield,  163  ;  wounds 
Tyler  mortally,  165  ;  knighted  by 
Richard,  166 


Walwyn,  283 

Warham,  Archbishop,  197 

Watson,  a  Norwich  preacher,  229 

Waynfleet,  William,  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, 1 88 

Wellington,  Duke  of,  326 

Wentworth  (see  Strafford,  Earl  of). 

Weston,  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer, 252 

Wilberforce,  William,  313 

William  I.,  his  character,  3  ;  con- 
dition of  country  under,  3-5  ; 
death,  5 

William  II.,  his  character,  5;  con- 
dition of  England  under,  6;  ap- 
points Anselm  to  Archbishopric 
of  Canterbury,  10;  his  quarrel 
with  Anselm,  11-13,  £t  seq,;  his 
death,  19 

Williams,  328 

Windebank,  262 

Winstanley,  Gerrard,  286  ;  leader 
of  the  "  Digger"  movement,  293  ; 
born  in  Lancashire,  but  settled 
in  London  as  a  trader,  294  ;  fails, 
and  retires  to  the  country,  294 ; 
publishes  pamphlets,  social  and 
religious,  295  ;  first  action  of  the 
"Diggers,"  297-8;  appeals  to 
General  Fairfax  against  inter- 
ference, 299 ;  receives  little 
notice,  300  ;  makes  further  active 
efforts,  300 ;  movement  sup- 
pressed, 300 ;  little  known  of 
him  later,  301 

Wollstonecraft,  Mary,  336 

Wolsey,  Cardinal,  197,  201,  202, 
203,  208,  217,  222 

Wraw,  John,  supporter  of  Ball  in 
Suffolk,  143,  146;  follows  Wat 
Tyler,  149;  at  Blackheath,  153; 
returns  to  Suffolk  to  announce 
rising,  153;  is  hanged  as  rebel, 
167 


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